Last week the Irish version of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was signed and passed in Ireland. This is a huge failure in protecting ourselves from censorship on the internet. Although roughly 80,000 citizens were against the signing of the bill, the Irish government still went through with it. In a democratic view, this is a huge contradiction. 80,000 people is a large group and completely ignoring their opinion is ridiculous.
The Irish Recorded Music Association supported this bill, which is not very surprising, which likely influenced the decision dramatically. People have a choice in a democracy and we should also be allowed to choose which bills pass, not just large corporations whose problem is much more than piracy. The way music industry is modeled is another discussion, but I feel like if the music industry doesn't change its opinion on piracy, the industry will collapse.
I feel like this could be a foreshadowing of what is to come with other countries. It is more likely that countries will follow in signing the bill if things don't go horribly wrong in Ireland after the pass of the bill. As citizens, we have limited power in the final decision of our government when it comes to something like this and if the government can blatantly ignore our efforts in deciding whether or not the bill should pass is anything but democratic.
The debates of SOPA and other piracy stopping bills will be an unstable topic for as long as the music industry, and other industries affected by piracy, refuse to rethink their business models. In my opinion, piracy isn't completely harming the music industry, but it's the music industry harming the musicians. Musicians are more often releasing their music for free online, which shows they understand that having their music "stolen" isn't the problem.
Conclusively, the government should only be influenced in signing SOPA by the citizens and not by corporations because their opinions are to maximize profits while the citizens are looking to maximize freedoms, where, in my opinion, far outweighs money.
Articles:
https://torrentfreak.com/sopa-ireland-signed-into-law-120229/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/01/irish-sopa-legislation-passed?newsfeed=true
This is reallly sad news... I agree on ur stance on freedom and things that are worth more than money. I just hope Canadians will be smarter when it comes to internet freedoms.
ReplyDeleteWith bills pending such as C-11 and C-30 we can only hope the Canadian government will listen to its citizens instead of doing something described in the article.
ReplyDelete