You’d expect a little less anarchy from something originally funded by the government and built by the military.But anarchic is exactly what the Internet has become. It’s been that way for a long time, in fact; ever since it metaphorically broke free from the government lab and spread across the world.
Not that there haven’t been efforts to rein it back in. The most recent attempts to tame the wild, wild net were SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act — the House of Representatives’ proposed legislation to fight Web-based copyright infringement) and PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PROTECT IP Act — the Senate’s version of the same bill).
You probably remember the howls of dismay that reverberated across the digital landscape after these bills were introduced late last year. Protests culminated with the January 18 blackout of Wikipedia, Reddit and an estimated 7,000 other websites.
Critics argue that the bills’ definitions of “piracy” are so broad they would effectively spell an end to news aggregation sites and just about all user-content hosting services (which means no more YouTube and a serious hobbling of Facebook).
The backlash forced SOPA and PIPA to be tabled in committee — not abandoned, exactly, but at least set aside, probably until after the election.
All of which leaves mixed emotions. On one hand, the wild and woolly nature of the World Wide Web has been an awesome adventure in unfettered free enterprise.
On the other hand, online criminality is rampant. Intellectual property is filched like dime store candy. Predators are everywhere. Naive and vulnerable netizens, the very young and very old, get victimized in unspeakable ways.
If SOPA and PIPA aren’t the answer, then what is? Are we addicted to anarchy, or do we grow weary of the lawlessness?
One thing’s sure: our virtual world is built solely of electrons and consensus. How it’s governed, if it’s governed — that’ll be by consensus, too.
The C4:
- SOPA and PIPA are controversial for their broad definitions of copyright infringement. These bills are currently dormant, but are by no means dead.
- The Web we have today came about by what we — all its users — opted to create. We’ve collectively built history’s most powerful tool for communication and commerce.
- We’ve also built a criminal’s paradise. Some of its victims are our most vulnerable citizens.
- What’s to be done about that? It’s up to all of us to decide.
