A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that major media
firms hate technology. They certainly fear it. Since Jack Valenti, the
legendary film industry lobbyist, said in 1982 that the VCR was like the
Boston Strangler, preparing to murder the innocents of Hollywood, they
have viewed such advances as a Godzilla creature rising from the sea to
threaten their existence.
In the past 30 years in the US, they
have lobbied for 15 pieces of legislation aimed at tightening their grip
on their content, as technology has moved ever faster to prise their
fingers open.
In this seemingly never-ending battle, 18 January 2012 was a defining date, a day when the
internet hit back. Mike Masnick, founder of
TechDirt
and one of Silicon Valley's most well-connected bloggers, remembers
running through the corridors of the Senate in Washington, laptop open,
desperately trying to find a Wi-Fi signal.
Around him was chaos.
Amid a cacophony of phones, political interns were struggling to keep up
with the calls and emails from angry people across the US and the world
claiming Hollywood-backed legislation was about to break the internet
and end its open culture forever. In an unprecedented day of action,
Wikipedia and
Reddit, a social news website, had
gone offline in a protest
organised by their communities of editors, and backed by thousands of
other sites, large and small. Google had blacked out its logo in
protest. Students around the world were bitching on Twitter that they
couldn't get their homework done without Wikipedia. Even
Kim Kardashian came out swinging.
One senator's office that Masnick visited calculated they had taken 3,000 calls. Within hours of the unprecedented assault,
Sopa, the Stop Online
Piracy
Act, was dead and a sister act, Pipa, a neat acronym for the tortuously
titled Protect IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic
Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act)
was sunk too.
In Europe, the action buoyed up opponents of Acta, the US-backed
international copyright treaty that has sparked protests across the
continent. Countries including Bulgaria, Germany, the Netherlands,
Poland and Slovakia have all refused to sign, arguing that Acta
endangers freedom of speech and privacy, and the
bill has stalled.
But for how long? "The industry has this down cold," Masnick says. The
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Valenti's old stomping
ground and one of the most powerful lobbying bodies in Washington, has
emerged bruised from the battle, but few doubt it will rally.
There is widespread anger among leading media companies about the way the
Sopa
fight played out. The protest had many voices but there was no doubting
whom the media executives blamed – Silicon Valley in general and Google
in particular. President Barack Obama had "thrown in his lot with
Silicon Valley paymasters",
according to Rupert Murdoch,
whose News Corp empire includes the Fox studios. "Piracy leader is
Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them," Murdoch wrote
on Twitter. "No wonder pouring millions into lobbying."
But trying
to blame Google or even to cast this as a battle between Silicon Valley
and Hollywood is to misrepresent a major shift in the media landscape,
say those pushing for a more open internet...
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