Translated By Florizul Acosta-Perez

January 19, 2012

Mexico - La Jornada - Original Article (Spanish)

The protest that took place yesterday [January 19] against the Stop Online Piracy Act (known by its English acronym SOPA), which is being discussed in the U.S. Congress, gathered the support of about 60,000 Web pages in that country alone, among them Wikipedia, Google, Youtube and Amazon. Along with these expressions of rejection, fifty lawmakers of different political stripes also supported the action, Even Republican Senators Marco Rubio and John Cornyn, who were two of the main backers of SOPA, withdrew their support for the initiative.

It is important to remember that if approved, the aforementioned legislative proposal would impose on Internet providers in our neighbor country the responsibility of "monitoring" and detecting Web pages that share content considered "illegal" - images, music, videos or text protected by copyright - forcing search engines like Google to remove such pages. This would be like allowing the Washington government, through its Justice Department, to shut down sites hosted in that country without a warrant, even put users at risk of imprisonment if they share - on personal Web pages, social networks or e-mails - links or contents copied without permission, even if they don't seek to benefit economically from their distribution.

The corollary to this attempt to stifle the free flow of information over the Internet is a system of intellectual property that, first of all, favors large corporations and follows the logic of plunder. In line with the development of the existing predatory economic model, the world's military and economic powers have imposed on other nations the obligation to respect and standardize regulations regarding copyrights and intellectual property. These favor multinational corporations, which are able to obtain, through patent, the ownership of plants, human genes, religious icons and cultural events of various kinds that in many cases are the result of the selfless labor of many individuals and groups.

So, rather than control or combat piracy or the allegedly defending jobs in cultural industries, the obvious reason for this legislation is to defend the interests of major music companies, publishing, film, pharmaceutical firms, among others, even if this results in irrational extremes like virtually shutting down entire networks.   

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

Unfortunately, the pretensions of registering trademarks for Web content is not only confined to the United Stated, but extends to countries like Spain and it's so-called Sinde Act, which was passed in last March, and even Mexico, with the tabling of a bill, at the request of PAN legislator Federico Döring, to reform federal laws on copyright and industrial property, which, according to several experts, is a Mexican version of SOPA.

In a situation in which the Internet has become an essential method of creation, dissemination and preserving human knowledge, the various social, political, scientific and business operators that share a network should at least consider whether the defense of their individual benefit in terms of intellectual property threatens the interest of the group or not.

SEE ALSO ON THIS:

Independent, U.K.: SOFA: Don't Take Net Freedom for Granted

National Post, Canada: I am Wikipedia, Hear Me Roar!
National Post, Canada: Megauploads: Kim Dotcom's Bubble Bursts

It is to be hoped that in U.S. lawmakers will maintain at least a sliver of political sense and reject the passage of a measure that would not only be a monumental mistake with national elections coming to the country in November, but it would also impact all users of the Web around the world, and would constitute a setback for the freedom and development of knowledge and culture in contemporary societies.