In case you haven’t heard, there was a lot of hubbub lately about a bill, introduced by senator Amy Klobuchar, which people believed would put Justin Bieber in jail for posting his covers of copyrighted songs on YouTube.
The bill is called the PROTECT IP ACT (S. 968), and according to the communication team of the bill’s cosponsor, Chris Coons, it aims to “to provide felony penalties for those who illegally consume copyrighted material.”
Holy crap, you might be thinking, that is me and everyone! The whole Internet freaked out, imagining the whole rest of the Internet in jail, including Selena Gomez’ boyfriend himself.
Since then, the senators have been like, “Whoa! You guys totally don’t get it. We’re just trying to straight-up crack down on stuff like Ninja Video.” Or as Coons himself actually put it, “I share these concerns, and that’s why I worked to make sure this bill cannot be used against a website – even if it contains some infringing material – unless the only purpose of the website is to infringe.”
Nonetheless, this bill is still frighteningly counterproductive, and here’s why:
1. Protecting copyrighted material shouldn’t be a top priority right now.
More and more of America’s young workforce are protesting on the streets (or at least taking miserable Photobooth pictures) about how a) We’re poor. B) We don’t have jobs. C) We have a lot of college debt. D) No health insurance. E) Rising inequality of wealth. F) Rising racial inequality.
It’s congress’ duty to set the public agenda – and the struggling, hopeless youth should take precedence over protecting a bunch of rich Hollywood producers and record labels with powerful lawyers. Maybe if kids actually had disposable income, they’d pay for the goddam books, shows and records.
2. Copyright lawsuits leave average people bankrupt for life
In the class case of Kind of Bloop, a man accused of copyright infringement had to settle for a huge fee ($32,500) that will cost him years to pay off, even if though many believe he was protected under Fair Use. For one individual, a lawsuit like this is excruciatingly expensive, especially when they’re facing lawyers belonging to a powerful, wealthy company who can afford to keep fighting and fighting.
3. This bill will create more felons than jobs.
This bill is solely effective as a scare tactic. “Kids will worry about becoming felons, so they won’t try to be the next Sean Parker!”
But that’s not the case. Earlier scare tactics haven’t stopped sharing of copyrighted material – they’ve just created a lot of ill will between producers of creative content and their audiences.
Instead, this bill will put more young people in prison. Did I mention that the cost of each prisoner is extremely high? I could find you a bunch of cool infographics to prove it, like this one about how prison is more expensive than Princeton.
4. I’m not convinced this will only affect sites that solely dole out copyrighted material.
Coons implied that he’s working on this, but earlier the definition says it’s aimed at consumers, rather than providers. Justin Bieber, don’t get off your guard yet.
5. Strict attempts to protect copyrighted material stagnate innovation, and don’t resonate with my generation.
Protecting these powerful “job providers” by destroying young people’s lives, often people who don’t realize the consequence of what they’re doing, is not innovation.
We’re not going to reverse the destructive effect the Internet has had on owners of intellectual property. Our generation has already dealt with the fact that you can’t use a traditional publishing house or record label to make it in an artistic field the way you used to be able to. But we haven’t stopped creating things. If you put a close ear to it, you’ll see that we have our own model of producing content, which includes DIY tactics, frugal production rates, peer funding, encouragement of sharing and remixing, and long-distance collaboration. Why not put more money into inspiring these creative models instead of funding the new felons you are trying to create?
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