Stop SOPA and ACTA in Ireland #SOPAireland

Wed, 25/01/2012 - 09:00 | Contact.ie

You may have heard of the recent announcement by Labour's Sean Sherlock TD to amend the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 without Dail debate, by means of statutory instrument. It will give away a lot of the freedoms we currently enjoy on the internet by giving a small number of unaccountable people the power to censor your internet, restrict vast amounts of content and decide who is infringing a copyright without due process.

We must make the political class aware that there is only so far they can close down society before ordinary people start suffering beyond what is acceptable.

Respond now before we start down the slippery slope of public censorship.

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Dear Sean,

I feel compelled to contact you regarding your Department's proposed amendment to the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 in which you feel it is necessary to give private individuals and corporations the ability to censor public users of internet services by allowing these private individuals/corporations to decide what is copyright infringement and what is not, without due process.

This is wrong for many reason. The benefits of your "SOPA type" legislation are few and only for the big recording and movie production companies who already enjoy monopolistic type protection from copyright. These same corporations have consolidated and merged over the last 20 years giving them double digit growth for many of those years by utilising existing copyright laws. They don't need more protection. The industry shills would have us believe enacting these laws will afford them protection against piracy, but in reality it does nothing to combat the real world piracy of physical movie DVD's, music CD's, software and other patent and IP infringements. Their assertions are demonstrably untrue if you care to look.

The drawbacks of giving private companies and individuals the powers to silence are too numerous to mention but the main issues at stake are freedom of expression, net neutrality, privacy, safe harbour, commerce and wider cultural and artistic endeavours. The internet IS copying. To be on the internet is to copy. Culture doesn't respond well to being walled in.

You can't have failed to notice the recent mass protests  from major worldwide tech players and content providers during the last week against the SOPA bill in the United States. This reaction will be universal in any territory that attempts to overtly or otherwise control the internet by prohibition. Censorship is an affront to our already challenged democracy.

Furthermore, and probably more importantly, there are technical issues here which will no doubt negate your attempts at censorship. The public will learn how to use IP proxies and other technology to bypass weak and unworkable law. There is a conceit in law that says any piece of legislation that is unenforceable is abhorrent to the nature and function of law. And internet censorship IS unenforceable.

There is an argument that online "piracy" is more akin to shoplifting, in the sense that it is part of the price of being in business. Not only that, but the aggregation of protected works actually benefits content creators given the right conditions, e.g. Creative Commons assignment. The current situation in the creative arts means that the tiny minority of content creators and artists benefit from the monopoly of big movie production and recording corporations - but it is self evident who benefits the most. HINT: It's NOT the little guy, the independent artist, "cottage industry" record companies, independent film makers, or the wider public who DO NOT WANT TO BE EXCLUDED FROM THE CREATIVITY PROCESS!

Please reassess your stance, consult with the wider industry and find consensus by listening to some of the brilliant minds out there who have many answers to the copyright conundrum. The major protagonists will find their own commercial solution to the changing paradigm, or die as is wont in this supposedly laissez faire economy. Can't say fairer than that I think.

Yours in hope,

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Dear TDs, Senators, and President Higgins,

We, Irish citizens, are very concerned about our democracy.

We believe that whatever decision is made regarding the Fiscal Compact treaty will have long-term and far-reaching effects on our society - on our children, our elderly, ourselves, and our social structures - effects that will far outlive the life of this government.

For this reason, we insist that, as citizens of this state, we have a right to partake in deciding whether or not Ireland should sign up to this treaty.

We are currently suffering the effects of decisions made on our behalf that many of us given the choice would not have made, (such as the bank guarantee scheme and others) and for that reason we are demanding that  from now on we must be consulted and have our will taken into account.

We demand to be asked about this new agreement by referendum before our government puts it into Irish law.

(The point of this email is not to advocate for a YES or a NO vote - simply for us to be given the choice of voting YES or NO.)

Regards,

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Stop SOPA and ACTA in Ireland #SOPAireland

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