The White House Comes Out Against SOPA

Conservatives and Liberals alike have been telling me I’m being naive for believing that President Obama, a sane individual, would not support bills like SOPA or PIPA if they were passed and sent to his desk. The man was practically elected president due to his ability to work the internet for campaign cash and grassroots support, and I believe him to be tech savvy enough to recognize how these bills would decimate the web and tech industry.

Though he’s not faced with possibly having to sign either bill into law yet, the Obama White House has come out with an official response to the anti-SOPA petitions on Whitehouse.gov. It’s a lengthy rebuttal, but here’s the most important part:

“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Now, I was tentatively going to title this post with a “Game Over” at the beginning, as this sort of condemnation would indicate that the current bills are now useless as they’d never get his signature, but reading on, I’m not exactly clear on the fine print.

“That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders”

So they do want to pass some sort of anti-piracy legislation this year, but one that doesn’t kill the entire internet. Admirable, I suppose, but what does that mean? If the parts of the bills that mandate courts to force ISP to block access to sites are stripped (and indications are that they will be) is that enough for the White House to support them? That’s unclear.

Much of the response is dedicated to crowdsourcing new ideas about how this goal of an internet friendly anti-piracy bill might work, if such a thing is even possible without direct government or corporate censorship of the internet.

The problem is that I don’t think you’re going to find a solution without violating first amendment rights. This entire “stop foreign sites from stealing American IP” idea that requires a “serious legislative response” is tantamount to telling other countries that since your laws aren’t good enough, we’re making new ones for you. As much as I love my country, we do not have that kind of jurisdiction in other nations than our own.

While there are legitimate concerns about copyright protection in today’s society, it’s hard to take the movie and music companies seriously when in the past they’ve claimed that technological advancements like radio and VHS tapes were going to kill their industry. Now it’s torrents and YouTube, and it’s the end of days for media, they swear. You’d think they’d realize by now to try and adapt rather than fight a long and bloody war they will never, ever win. Can you imagine the music industry spending millions to lobby Congress to kill the radio eighty years ago? It’s silly, but just as silly as what’s happening now.

To quote gaming mogul Gabe Newell, “Piracy is a service problem.” His company, Valve, puts customers first by giving them the best product possible for the lowest price they can, and his distribution client, Steam has seen a hundred percent growth over the last seven years because of such practices. In an age when movie tickets are $15 apiece and we’re paying $80 a month for 895 cable channels we never watch, it’s hard to say the entertainment industry is trying their hardest to truly fight piracy by offering the best products and services they can.

The fact that the White House appears to be dismissing SOPA and PIPA in their current forms is certainly a good step forward, but any talk of internet censorship, whether it be of foreign or domestic sites, is unconstitutional. Not to mention the fact that our government should not be doing the bidding of companies that think an appropriate response for downloading a few songs is a million dollar fine or jail time.

SOPA and PIPA can’t just be slowed or changed, they must be crushed. And we’re almost there.

Tweet me your anti-SOPA ideas and join my Facebook censorship protest for next week.