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Sometimes I feel like I’m the only dope who’s still paying for movies and music. If I want to watch a movie, I buy it from Netflix or Amazon. If I like a song, I cough up $.99 for it on iTunes. My kids think I’m crazy – they seem to find whatever movies, TV shows and music they want to listen to for free online. I don’t ask where or how. They wouldn’t give me a straight answer if I did. Yes, it sounds kind of fishy.
And that’s what the Software Online Piracy (SOPA) and Protect IP (PIPA) Acts are all about. Later this month the House (SOPA) and Senate (PIPA) will be debating and trying to reconcile both bills into law. The technology community is up in arms about this. Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, Wikipedia, Twitter...all the big names are against the legislation because they’re terrified of being shut down due to the bill’s onerous enforcement conditions. The White House has recently voiced its own opposition to the bill.
Not that these people are against fighting online piracy. Everyone gets it. We know what SOPA and PIPA are trying to accomplish. This is property, like anything else, and it should be protected.
But the bill is way too burdensome. And in its current state, it could have a big impact...even on a small business like mine.
For example, if I were to inadvertently have copyrighted material on my website, or my company’s Facebook or LinkedIn pages, my business may be in violation of the law. Can I include portions of that helpful article for my clients to read or is that wrong? Can I link to that video showing how to resolve a technical issue, or is that also protected? Can I share info from an industry website or will that subject me to penalties? The law is really designed to protect big movie studios and publishers from online piracy, but who’s to say it couldn’t be used by others to take advantage of their competitors, big or small? The bill would have a huge impact on the ability of many small companies to raise money too. Would you invest in that digital startup if there was a big chance of them being sued because they could be shut down for online piracy infringement?
SOPA and PIPA aren’t good bills. But I don’t agree with so many of the defeatists in the industry who say that online piracy can’t be stopped. People thought the same thing about e-mail spam, but recent evidence proves it’s been brought under control. We’ve cured polio. We’ve built pyramids. We even overcame the Germans when they bombed Pearl Harbor (uh-oh, was that a copyrighted clip?). If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this world, humans can accomplish anything if we put our minds and (most importantly) our money behind it.
And online piracy, like anything else, can be overcome with the right amount of resources. The question is do companies really want to spend what it will take to solve this problem? Is the return on investment worth it? Or do publishers, like so many other industries, just take a reserve for these losses and invest their efforts elsewhere.
I think online piracy can be addressed in two giant steps. But before reading on, I admit that my greatest weakness is sometimes oversimplification. I’m just a business owner and not an intellectual property lawyer or security expert so I’m probably missing a million things, right? Fair enough. And I can only be so detailed in 1,500 or so words. Feel free to comment. Ready?
Step 1: Identify Pirated Content
For starters, we need to create an Internet Copyright law that stands independent of all other copyright laws. Because the Internet is different. What exactly constitutes a “copyright” on the Internet? Is a five minute clip of a 30 minute show OK to post to YouTube? What about six of them? Is a paragraph or two snipped from an article breaking the law? Should all material be required to have a link back to its source? Can I listen to that song on Grooveshark even though I haven’t paid anything? I’m really not sure what constitutes a copyright online and whether or not I, or my business, is in the wrong when I’m including stuff on my site or social media pages. Bring in the attorneys. We could use them. But please, make it as simple as possible.
Once we all understand what is and isn’t an Internet Copyright, I think we should then have a central, searchable online repository of copyrighted information like the Library of Congress. That sounds like a huge, huge site. And it is. But if a movie studio wants to make sure its movie is protected, it must submit a digitized file, with an assigned master identification, to that site. The same goes for people that produce TV shows, written material or any other content they want protected. It should all be registered on this site. I think the owner of the material can be allowed to identify specific exemptions so that certain sites, customers, or people who have received their permission are able to use their stuff. I also think that content providers should be forced to list everything individually – no blanket copyrights are allowed.
And to add even more hurdles, anyone submitting content for copyright protection must also pay a fee. I don’t know how much. But enough to make the provider think about it. This way if people are serious about protecting their content they’ll pay for the protection. Whatever fees are collected will go towards not only funding this repository, but also towards Step 2.
Step 2: Enforcement
People say it’s impossible to enforce copyright violations. The Internet is just too big. There are too many rogue sites all around the world that pop up every day. Tracking them all down is too difficult. But I don’t agree. It’s possible to enforce online piracy. It just takes a LOT of resources to do it.
For starters, finding material that is in violation of a copyright can be accomplished through a combination of automation and human effort. As I write this, YouTube is running thousands of scripts to identify potentially copyrighted material posted to their site. Search engine technology today can locate images, videos and audio content and the technology keeps getting better and better. Movie companies and other content publishers could be doing the same thing on their own. Search technology, combined with a not-so-small army of humans combing the Internet would go a long way towards finding pirated material online, at least where traffic is significant enough to be costly. The Internet is huge. The world is huge. But things can be found. Not everything. But the big things.
Even so, how do you enforce this? The U.S. government does have the ability to affect our own root servers and Domain Name System (DNS) structure. But all a content provider has to do is host their materials overseas on a non-U.S. domain. Some users may not be savvy enough to reach these sites, but many others can figure out how to Google “overseas DNS” and route their internet connectivity to servers out of the country to get their Angelina Jolie fix. Restricting DNS queries to domestic servers would effectively kill the Internet for us, so this approach is unlikely.
One way to enforce would be to require Internet Service Providers to route everything through a central server, where trusted domains could be checked. But, besides the investment required, such action could significantly impede Internet performance and create a fatal chokepoint of data. Our local high school has such a setup. My kids get MacBooks from their school which have been pre-configured to always go through a central server where illegitimate sites are first checked before browsing anywhere. Sometimes the server gets overloaded with traffic or goes down...and then no one can browse anywhere. It’s not a great answer.
My opinion: the only way to enforce online piracy is for international cooperation. This is not a new idea. It’s just the best one. A simple statement. A big challenge. Like any world war, enforcement of online piracy cannot be done just by the U.S. A quasi-private-public-sector organization would need to be created with representatives from companies and governments of all countries willing to participate. This organization would have the authority, after some type of due diligence process, to blacklist those sites that are illegally publishing confirmed copyrighted material. They would be authorized to use the FBI and Interpol to find and bring to prosecution the largest offenders. Because it’s the Internet one of the many challenges will be to execute this process as fast as possible. The organization would also have the ability for valid publishers to appeal any action as well. It’s a big job. It won’t be cheap. But it can be done.
SOPA and PIPA are too flawed and probably won’t pass Congress unless huge changes are made. But that doesn’t mean that online piracy can’t be seriously curtailed. As my dad once said, “all problems in business come down to two things: time and money.” We can solve this problem with a lot of both. Is it worth it?
Besides Forbes, Gene Marks writes weekly for The New York Times and The Huffington Post.
