Yesterday many websites were in a World-Wide Blackout against The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, and it’s sister bill, Protect IP Act (PIPA), that is currently working their way through the United States Congress and the Senate. These new bills threaten every facet of the internet by letting government regulate what can and can not be seen; a form of censorship – just like China and Iraq does to their Internet users.
Craig's List Blackout in Protest of SOPA and PIPA
Thousands of website owners, webmasters, and SEOs (including Tico Times Directory), joined with the big boys like Google, Craig’s Lists, and Wikipedia and protested for 24/hrs this scary and very unfair bill. The purpose of the blackout was twofold: to raise public awareness, and to encourage people to share their views with their elected representatives.
Fighting online piracy is VERY important and we believe in the copyrights and trademarks protection of others. Unfortunately, SOPA and PIPA bills target the innocent places like American social networks, Blogs and search engines. This alone undermines the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S jobs. In otherwords, those in protest, believe the bill violates a few US Amendment Rights, like the 1st Amendment – Freedom of Speech.
The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding and not individual websites.
Ironically [yesterday], one of our accounts (a well-known Blog) got a nasty email that threatened legal action when a innocent Press Release they published (from one of their other accounts and almost 2 years old) mentioned the account’s Trademark name in the Press Release. Our account immediately sent an apology email, deleted the 2-year old Press Release, and a 30 minute phone conversation, the issue was hopefully resolved.
Clearly, one can see, this Bill can make the innocent, a lot more guilty. Or guilty until proven innocent.
Google's Blackout in Protest of SOPA and PIPA
So What Does SOPA and PIPA Have To Do With Costa Rica?
The answer: Every Costa Rican should take this bill very seriously and should join in the protest!
First, it targets Costa Rican’s who cater to the tourist industry. If these bills pass any copyright holder can simply allege a site infringes on their copyright and the site could be redirected (or shut down) at the DNS (Domain Name System) level and could be cut off from all major ad services and payment processing services – all without any trial or due process of any kind.
In otherwords, many Costa Rican websites have US servers/hosts, so all it would take is for someone to complain to the server that “so and so” is using OUR photo of Jaco Beach, and that server (by law) many disable your website or just like the owner of the Blog who innocently published a Press Release.
Or in the monetary view you have a Bed and Breakfast in Tamarindo and you rely on Paypal for deposit money. A complaint may be filed on your Paypal account (or any other US financial institute you use for that matter) and the next thing you know, your Paypal account has been disable, thus cutting off your financial well-being.
Or you are a Sport fishing Charter Service and on your website you have fishermen fishing with Penn reels. Penn may complain to your server, that you have violated their Trademark, and they next thing you know, your website has been shut down.
About 4 months ago, we got involved with 5-star hotel in Costa Rica where the website index page was shut down by Google because some website “claimed” they were infringing on some BS copyright material that the website had permission to use in the first place. After four months and God-knows how much lost of income, the website was cleared of any wrong doing and the main page (index/home) was back on line again at Google. Google’s hands were tied on this issue, and they had to act accordingly – just one of the major reasons why Google and many others protested yesterday to stop BS claims like the hotel had to go through.
About the only thing that saved the website, they had the resources to fight the action. Unfortunately, many Costa Rican’s mom and pop websites are not in that position.
Please help keep the Internet free, to much is at stake Vote No ON PIPA and SOPA and to learn more visit Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The problem with SOPA and PIPA is the same problem with the Fair Use claus in the Copyright Act, the wording is too vague. Fair use should cover reviews/critiques, parody, and sampling, but I’ve read too many circumstances where that was not the case. The same will happen with SOPA and/or PIPA; they should be laws that will prevent theft, instead the wording is such that they can be used to attack sites that follow Copyright law under the Fair use claus, such as this beloved site. It’s infuriating to have this legislation gain ground when just a month ago the media and government were speaking out against censorship in China.