SOPA opera

By Dan Pearce

Students, knowledge seekers and fact finders across the globe were in for a surprise on Wednesday when they were unable to access their favourite encyclopedia.

Wikipedia closed their virtual doors to their English content for 24 hours to raise awareness about the online piracy bills being introduced to U.S. Congress. If passed, the bills would effectively censor the internet.

Over 162 million people visited the massively popular website while it was blacked out. Eight million of the visitors took Wikipedia’s suggestion to search for their congressional representative.

Two days later, the bills were withdrawn from Congress.

However, the battle is far from over. Hollywood and the music industry are among the richest and most influential industries in the world, and piracy is putting a major dent in their bottom line.

According to the Institute for Policy Innovation, “more than $58 billion is lost to the U.S. economy annually due to content theft, including more than 373,000 lost American jobs, $16 million in lost employees earnings, plus $3 billion in badly needed federal, state and local governments’ tax revenue.”

The entertainment industry is not about to give up.

Nor should they. With the ease in acquiring copyrighted material, it’s easy to forget that it’s still illegal.

Market research firm Interpret, which focuses on entertainment, media and technology, published the results of a survey on illegal music downloads covering 64 million people. Of this group, 24 million respondents (36%) admitted that they had downloaded music illegally in the past three months.

Congress’ answer to the problem is obviously not the solution. There must be a middle ground between freedom of speech and the prevention of piracy. What is most important is that the tech industry participates in the discussion.

Surely the people that designed the technology that enables us to aggregate much of the world’s information can come up with a solution to piracy that doesn’t infringe on people’s freedoms.

The entertainment lobbyists made their move and the tech giants flexed their muscles. Now the question is: are the Google’s, Wikipedias and Reddits willing to work with the entertainment industry and Congress to come up with a solution to this problem?

Perhaps Steve Jobs gave us the answer with the iTunes model, were people pay a small fee to download there music. Despite piracy’s popularity, iTunes contiunes to thrive. One thing is certain, this is their first act in what will be a long and hard fought battle on both sides.