With the Internet becoming an indispensable part of our lives, it’s hard to imagine what life would be like without sites like Google, Facebook, or Youtube. However unimaginable it may be, this might actually come true with the newly introduced anti-piracy bills, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). These bills will erase all possibility of freely sharing information and ideas online by censoring copyright infringing sites, SNS posts, or blog entries that production companies find harmful. Sites such as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Mediafire can be seriously jeopardized or even shut down, and companies can sue any individual for singing a song, posting a video with a movie clip, or sharing music files online.
SOPA and PIPA have sparked serious objection among students, whose lives are heavily dependant on the Internet. “I can’t believe that the American government actually came up with these bills. What happened to the freedom of speech and expression? Internet piracy has been a big problem, but I don’t think this is the right way to solve it,” said Cesar Badillo, a junior in Korea Kent Foreign School. Badillo also added that it is essential to “raise awareness so that more people participate in the protest”.
Some students don’t agree that these copyright infringing sites infringe on the production companies’ rights at all. “The Internet has been a great source of advertisement for the media industry and if it becomes less of an entertainment, I feel like computers would go extinct,” said Sageda Hydoub, a junior attending Korea Kent Foreign School. She asserts that these bills will eventually do more harm than good to companies because the main source of advertisement would be gone.
Others, on the other hand, understand the reasoning behind these seemingly disastrous bills. “They might sound a little extreme, but at least the government is trying to confront Internet piracy issues and suggest some solutions,” said Hannah Song, a junior at Korea Kent Foregin School. “It must be pretty hard for the government too because it has to keep that middle ground between companies and common Internet users,” she added.
Active protests both online and offline led to the postponement of SOPA and PIPA, but they are still very much alive. Controversy is most likely to continue on the issue of anti-piracy acts, and the exact outcome is quite unpredictable.
