SOPA and PIPA are, let's face it, bad.
Al Gore may have claimed to have invented the internet, and in a way he did, by sponsoring the Digital Millennium Act. The DMA has a number of principles, including that online trades are not taxed and that the interchange of data over internet networks remains neutral. It was as important to the growth of the internet as the development of HTML and the world wide web by Sir Tim Berners Lee in my opinion.
But the DMA has been hijacked by companies who have created virtual online monopolies such as Google and Facebook, the vampire squids of the online world. They blatantly use other people's IP as their own and build massive businesses on the back of this. Imagine if we all charged Facebook copyright for the content we freely give them ?
The problem is, we either have copyright, or we don't. Online users glibly click on those 'I Agree' buttons that link to sixty page legal terms drafted by the finest legal brains of our generation in order to circumvent this, but, fundamentally, we're in the wrong place.
If Wayne Rooney can make money from his resurfaced head, so can I. If anyone takes my photo and publishes it anywhere, they owe me. And that includes on Facebook.
If Google links to pirated content on the internet, they have the same liability as a student from Sheffield, or anyone else who actively supports piracy (for Godsakes, Google puts its own ads around content pirated using its own services... A vampire's vampire...).
In the past, Governments were concerned about monopolies, about organisations that fundamentally worked outside the spirit of the law.
SOPA and PIPA represent one part of bug business against another part of big business. What we actually need is another Al Gore - someone who will stand up for freedom, free markets, but also protect the value generated by small entrepreneurs, from traders to musicians and film-makers, who are now horribly exploited by big business.
The real irony of this is that Sky has been shutting down Al Gore's Current TV channel across Europe. We're in a new era, where the big guys are bigger than ever.
