The Internet is the world’s last bastion of unregulated free speech. Fortunately for citizens of the United States, our government has kept its hands off of it, unlike other totalitarian regimes around the world. But we almost lost this exception when Congress introduced new legislation that would take government censorship to a whole new level.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate claimed to address ongoing debates regarding online piracy and protection of intellectual property. On paper, this sounds like a novel idea. Supporters in both chambers of Congress claimed the passing of these laws would not affect sites like Wikipedia or Reddit, and instead target sites hosting pirated material.
What the legislations sponsors claim to attack isn’t a bad thing. The protection of intellectual property is essential to a healthy and thriving market economy, where individuals can profit from the fruits of their own labor. However, the precedent that passing such laws would entail would do more harm than good.
Had SOPA and PIPA’s sponsors not dropped their support before the bills came to the floor, all it would have taken is more statist administrations to bring increasingly heavier government presence in our daily lives. President Barack Obama, for instance, campaigned against several of the PATRIOT Act’s ramifications, which were passed under President George W. Bush’s leadership. But Obama's recent signing of the National Defense Authorization Act expanded the federal government’s authority far beyond warrantless wiretaps to include the indefinite detention of American citizens. Such a move would not have been possible without the passage of items like the PATRIOT Act, regardless of its intention to only target suspected terrorists.
The Internet is perhaps the only remaining realm where the free market of ideas can truly flourish. Created with the help of the U.S. Defense Department (no thanks to Al Gore, as some might believe), it began as a merging of networks such as ARPANET, CYCLADES, NPL and others into a virtual network of networks. Today, it has evolved into an essential component of our market economy, allowing businesses to reach out to potential consumers like never before. We, as consumers, have directly profited from this as well, as seemingly limitless information about almost anything available can be accessed within seconds.
Government regulation can only damage this. And the politicians responsible for even conceiving the idea that government has a rightful place in yet another area of expression in our society must be held accountable. Among those who announced they would have voted in favor of sticking their hands into our business include N.C. Sen. Kay Hagan and Rep. Melvin Watt.
While both these members of Congress are Democrats, it should be noted that the bills were supported by members of both parties. SOPA and PIPA have been pulled for now, but these incidents should remind us that it is better to judge those we send to Washington by their character and their ideas, not by whether they have an R or a D next to their name on C-SPAN.