On a freezing Friday morning as I return back to my den from yet another soporific lecture, I ponder over the mundane nature of life over the last 2 months as it has been a long wait for my destined job which is yet to come by. If not for the internet it would have been worse... what would I do without Facebook and its apps, Twitter and its information, Gmail and the conversations, Zephyr (our download hub) and the movies & the TV series. But now the Indian govt. wants to censor the internet like China. Firstly, let me tell you I pity the Chinese youth on the amount of knowledge they are missing due to this censorship. Now, coming to the point, what would this censorship mean for us, the future of India? Lets take an example - you are a youth journalist who writes on politics and religion. Fed up of the Govt.'s policies on reservation, you write against the reservation for religious minorities. The Govt. or the religious minorities complain to the host and your blog is shut down. Is it fair? Is it even legal as per the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression?
Lets take you to US now. The US Govt. is trying to pass SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which is even one step ahead of our IT Act.
What is SOPA?
Lets say X is the owner of some kind of copyrighted material like movie, music, novel, etc. and it observes that there is a site Y operating outside of US and that site according to X seems to be infringing on the copyright by US law. In normal circumstances, X can't act against these sites as they are outside the jurisdiction of US laws. What SOPA intends to do is to not only provide some tools to X to stop such activity but also allows X to go on a witch-hunt for anyone who might even enable such activity including sites like Google, Bing, ad networks, Paypal, etc. who help the site Y do its business. Even DNS servers within US that associate Y's domain's name with actual servers can be served court orders/notices that compels them to cut off ties with Y. What SOPA does is it classifies an internet site to be dedicated to theft of US property even if it enables violation of copyright laws in US. In this scenario, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, CNN, etc. can all be shut down because user generated content may violate copyright laws.
Don't you think this is a shoot first, think later policy? I mean the site Y can be a legal site in the country it is operating in. Also what if it actually is not infringing on any copyright. Now, you may ask if they can sue back. The problem is even if Y proves itself innocent, they can't sue because as per SOPA a party can be sued only if it "knowingly materially misrepresents the violation". So, if the site X feels that there is a copyright violation, he goes on to get Y shut down and when later Y is proved innocent, X can claim that they felt so and did not knowingly misrepresented the violation, and it will be allowed to walk away free of all charges.
And on top of all these unfair clauses, a site Z can be considered illegal even if it has secured its site such that US Govt. cannot confirm the violation. This is clear intrusion of privacy and is a draconian Act.
So, my plea to the free people of the US - please ensure that you Stop SOPA and my plea to fellow Indians - let us unite in this censorship of our freedom of speech.
P.S. I hope my blog doesn't lead to blogger.com being shut down or lead to my blog being removed, after all this can be considered defamation of US policy makers or an instigation against Indian Govt. :D :P
I would like to acknowledge http://www.khanacademy.org for its highly informational video on SOPA.
