Originally published on January 18, 2012.
You don’t need a link to find out what’s going with the SOPA “Blackout,” or all that other stuff. It’s all over the place, beyond those with a special interest in intellectual property. [UPDATE: But here’s one anyway.]
Real news over an IP issue? Not quite.
Rather, the news and the attention arise from the fact that the threatened power-grab that SOPA represents goes far beyond IP, or “enforcement,” or “brands,” or even “piracy.”
Oh, those are all real things, real concepts. But their meaning has become so distorted in the public and political debate and spin that they get scare-quotes here today. It is precisely by turning piracy into a mission-critical bogey-man that the strong-IP advocates have perhaps, for once, overplayed their hands.
A few years ago “civil libertarians” told us our liberties were at an end because of the Homeland Security Act and related policy changes arising from terrorist threats. Those protests were mainly sincere, but they turned out to be overstated. For most of us, life in America is pretty much like it was before, except mainly at the airport.
If, however, there had been a serious and widespread degradation in the quality and quantity of our civil rights because of the “new world” that the September 11th attacks, we would have something serious to discuss. In fact it is still something serious to discuss. How much are we, indeed, prepared to give of our privacy, our freedom of movement, our personal space, for what may or may not be enhanced physical safety? Important, fundamental questions.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by while my rights, or those of my clients, are sold down the river to protect the franchises of Sony, Coach and Universal. And that’s what makes this more than an “IP” issue, and why it’s news, and why it matters.
