Wednesday 16 May 2012
Business

Are we facing even darker days for the internet?

For one day, some of the biggest and best-known websites on the net went dark. Wordpress, Wikipedia, Google and others protested against draft US legislation that they say imposes draconian new rules on internet use and publishing. Giles Turnbull explains

Wikipedia's blackout
Wikipedia's blackout

The web went dark last week. Not because of a technical problem, but because millions of Americans were protesting.

Wikipedia blacked out its webpage completely. Other sites such as WordPress, Reddit, Flickr, and MetaFilter blacked their content completely or partially. Even Google covered its logo with a black rectangle for a day.

They were all protesting about draft US legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

Backed by the movie and music industries, the Acts were designed to fight back against people who share illegal copies of copyrighted content over the internet.

But critics (including many of the biggest names on the web) said they were flawed.

If passed, they would give copyright owners draconian new powers to block website domains belonging to sites they accuse of breaking copyright law.

From a technical perspective, simply blocking a domain name wouldn't shut down the website behind it. It would still be accessible via a numerical IP address.

The Acts would also grant the US authorities the power to remove websites from search engine results - something that Google's chairman Eric Schmidt said would "criminalise linking and the fundamental structure of the internet itself".

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said: "We can't let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet's development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet."

Last week's blackout certainly had an effect. Wikipedia said that 162 million people saw its protest page (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/SOPA/Blackoutpage), and many thousands called their political representatives to complain.

Nonetheless, the people who created SOPA and PIPA won't stop now. Even if those Acts fail, there will probably be more. That's one battle over, but the war has only just begun.