World Wide Black Out

Firstly, readers should have some context as to SOPA and how support had grown before last Wednesday:

Last week’s ‘Black Wednesday’ movement across the internet in protest to the proposed PIPA and SOPA bills were undoubtedly a widespread victory.

Having previously held the backing of law-makers, large multi-national corporations and large swathes of US press, the action staged over a single day effectively U-turned the action and has displaced the probability of the legislation being passed over the coming years.

For one of the first times, web based action had a positive, constructive voice within US congress, with ripples felt around the world.

Effectively, the SOPA and PIPA acts would have allowed US firms that found content shared contrary to their distribution policy to take the websites to court and have the site blocked, causing investors to pull their contributions and slowly destroy the financial viability as well as the overall creditability of the site.

Nothing short of internet censorship.

What makes the internet such an effective and efficient communicative tool is the sheer volume of mediums by which an unprecedented number of media and information file types can be conveyed and shared. Never before has public information been so versatile: it is the voice of the public that shapes internet content itself.

In fact, the evidence of the PIPA and SOPA rejections has effectively ensured the twitter revolution continues, as a new frontier of global enfranchisement.

In the face of the prospect of what has been dubbed Black March, a month of protest against the bills, support has dwindled to a new low. The power of internet support has never before had such a widespread impact and has now proved itself an indicator of public feeling and mode on a range of issues, beyond the simple forms of protest staged by social utility websites.

An estimated 13 million people participating in Wednesday's online protest, with approximately 50,000 websites going dark during the day, most notably for a public domain, Wikipedia. Opponents additionally sent around 3 million email messages to Congress during the protest.

Of course, there is no denying the extent to which the internet unwittingly promotes piracy: in 1999, the RIAA sold $15billion of music on CD and tape formats. Even with the advent of easier download, that figure had more than halved to just under $7billion last year.

However, the internet allows much more music to be accessed on demand across more genres, from more eras and by more users. Perhaps the new measure of music success in a digital age is Youtube hits: Stand up Rihanna, making headlines this week being confirmed as the most viewed female artist on the video sharing site.

Diversifying and altering the means by which success becomes apparent is crucial in an era that has seen the integration of online players, streaming films, blogged news and social updates.

Besides, the more worrying problem is how easily such a bill may have been passed. Without the social media consensus, there probably would have been a blanket black out as websites were pulled left and right.

For example, in the dying days of the Labour government of 2010, just such a bill was passed in this country, but shifted to the bottom of the news pile amongst election propaganda. The ‘Digital Economy Bill’ made it legal for files to be brought to websites that ‘may be suspected of uploading copyright materials’ even if there was not yet proof of this activity.

It is time to realise that our own country has supported these draconian restrictions that inhibit the freedom of internet usage and that whilst digital territory, these are still the fringes of our rights to freedom of expression and should be guarded with stringent attention.

Otherwise, there may not be such a clear cut warning the next time such a bill faces a world government.