New bills could severely censor social media

Where the English Wikipedia homepage stood now looms an ominous black page with a frightening message: "Imagine a world without free knowledge." Wikipedia, like many other sites including WordPress and Reddit, is participating today in 24 hours of blacked-out content to simulate the effects that two new bills might have on the Internet.

 The bills coming under fire are the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which will attempt to inhibit copyright infringement on entertainment from foreign websites, such as illegal music and movie downloads. Their reach, however, is more widespread.

 PIPA primarily targets foreign websites infringing on copyrights, and would require browsers to "block access to infringing domain names" according to WordPress.org. Sites, blogs and forums containing links to infringing sites are liable to be sued for even one prohibited link, and individuals submitting posts violating copyright could face five years in prison. Corporations would also be allowed to pull funding from websites hosting infringing material.

To put this in perspective, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook would all require censoring of their users. Eckerd students balked at the idea. 

"I feel like the whole point of the internet is to be able to express yourself and also to make it easier for information to be available to people," sophomore Jenna Nevins-Perle said. "And if these laws or whatever they are are passed then it will be more difficult to get the information that is needed."

Others approached the issue from a global perspective.

"I think that for the continued protection of freedom of speech and liberty, which is what America is meant to stand for, it is critical that the internet is not censored in any way," sophomore Erik Brydges said. "While the internet may be a hot bed for piracy, fraud and incorrect information, it also provides outlets for democracy, as was seen in the Iranian elections in 2009, the Arab Spring protests and the Occupy movements worldwide. I am also concerned about the foreign policy implications that censorship in the United States would have in other countries that we often criticize of having censorship, such as China and North Korea. Wouldn't this brand us as hypocrites and, at the same time, legitimize their arguments?"

Like any firewall, however, there is a way around PIPA's restrictions. Users will be able to access forbidden sites by typing in the IP address, but companies will be able to sue websites they consider not to be properly filtering content, WordPress.org said. This could have a significant impact on social media sites, even sites like Tumblr and SoundCloud. 

Greater still are the ramifications PIPA will have on the "inter-workings of the net," WordPress.org suggests. In a recent report, Domain Name System (DNS) experts, including Steve Crocker of Shinkuro, Inc., David Dagon of Georgia Tech, Dan Kaminsky of DKH, Danny McPherson of Verisign, Inc. and Paul Vixie of Internet Systems Conso, assert that these bills "would threaten the security and stability of the global DNS," making the internet "less safe and less reliable," WordPress.org said. 

The bills will be voted on Jan. 24 by the Senate.