Over the past few months, and especially today, you may have heard a lot about SOPA and PIPA.  Major sites like Wikipedia craigslist, and Google have put up a protest today voicing their opposition to these two pieces of legislation that are currently under consideration in the US congress.  There is a lot of hype and spin coming from both sides of the fence on this one.  Movie studios, record companies and artists are praising the bills, saying that they will help curb online piracy and help them recover their bottom line.  Internet companies are crying foul saying that the bills will "kill the internet".

 

I'm sure many of you are wondering how this really affects you, a user of a model train web site.  You don't download movies and music here..  You don't do it anywhere for that matter..  You're a law abiding citizen, so why should you care?  Because this law, the way it is written, has the potential to shut down myLargescale.com and any other site that includes user generated content.  How is this so?  Allow me to give you a couple examples and their possible outcomes with this legislation in place.  (All of these examples are things that have happened on MLS.)

 

1. A member of the site includes a copyrighted image in his post that was taken by another individual.
2. A member of the site creates a video tour of his layout and includes a music track that is copyrighted.
3. A member of the site posts a link to another site that offers illegal downloads of copyrighted material.

Under SOPA and PIPA, in each of these cases, the copyright holder would be able to contact authorities and request that, without due process, access to myLargescale.com be blocked.  The authorities would then take action to remove myLargescale.com from the DNS system. (The address book of the internet.)  You, the membership would no longer be able to access myLargescale.com and its forums.  This is an act now and ask questions later mentality.  It's putting the burden of proof on the site owners, and not on the accuser.  It's making web site owners such as myself responsible for all the content that users add to the site.  It would make it not worth my time to keep the site up and running.  I'd have to retain legal counsel to help defend against any issues that come up, and monitor every post that is made on the site.

 

Proponents of the bills claim that sites like myLargescale.com are not the target of the legislation and the odds of that happening are very slim.  While I understand this argument, I disagree.  The legislation makes no distinction between a model train forum and a site hosting illegally obtained music and movies exclusively for download.  While they claim that they would not target an internet model train forum, under this law, they could.  Even though I would have done nothing wrong.  Once they did, I would have no recourse.  There is no due process. myLargescale.com would be shut down forever.

 

We have several members on the site that work in television, movies, and music.  I'm all for protecting their intellectual property, but not at the risk of limiting our freedom of speech, and access to information that we want and need.  There are other alternatives and solutions to the problem.  SOPA as it stands will do little to protect copyright holders, and in the process, has the potential to tear the very fabric of the internet that links us together.

 

Many major sites across the internet are "blacking out" today in protest of these bills.  I have opted not to go to that degree, but I ask you to please contact your congressmen and representatives and let them know that you oppose this flawed legislation.  Until a solution can be found that will be effective and not have such a large potential for abuse, we cannot allow congress to grant such wide sweeping powers as this bill. 

 

 

 

For more information on SOPA and PIPA:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

 

Sign Google's petition:

 

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/