Talk to anyone about the topic of free speech on the Internet right now and there are two acronyms that will likely pop into the conversations, PIPA and SOPA. Short for the “Stop Online Piracy Act” and “Protect IP Act,” these bills were designed to address concerns about online piracy and illegal file sharing, but have become a target for advocates of the First Amendment and an open Internet.

An increasing list of technology and content providers have pointed to these proposed laws as lines in the sand that should not be crossed. The culmination of this stance will happen today Wednesday Jan. 18, when some of the largest and best known critics of these laws will participate in a black out, that will leave their sites inaccessible for up to 24 hours of protest. Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing, Mozilla, WordPress and the ICanHasCheezBurger network will all go dark in opposition to these bills.

Your first response is likely to be “what am I going to use for the research report I have due on the 19^th when I can’t get into Wikipedia?” The next question though, and ultimately the more important one should be, “why would some of the largest websites in the world protest this bill?”

The assertion goes, that the vague and misleading verbiage in these bills, could allow intellectual property holders to use extraordinary and damaging means to stop copyright infringement and piracy. In the most extreme cases, they could even be seen as a means to censorship.

Reddit, is a social news site that boasted over two billion page views this past December and operates primarily on user submitted content. Both the community and the management of Reddit have been vocal in their opposition to these two bills and will participate in todays blackout. I had a chance to speak with Erik Martin, general manager of Reddit about how this bill could affect the site and the Internet at large.

“One of the biggest problems we have with these bills is they were written by people who are just ignorant of the technology involved. There are  very basic definitions in framework of these bills that are so broad and vague, and ignorant of the technology that it’s just ripe for abuse and unintended consequence, that could cause a lot of burden on not only companies like Reddit but startups,” Martin said.

At the surface there are a few differences between the two bills, as they’re both designed to accomplish the same goal, the elimination of only piracy. It’s important to note the extent to which piracy has affected industries like music and movies, and concede at some level that something should be done to make it more manageable. While the end goal of these bills is honorable, the by-any-means-necessary sentiment is what makes them unacceptable to many companies that are the life blood of the Web.

Carl Ford (News - Alert), Partner at Crossfire media and an expert in network communications said, “The founders of the Internet made up a structure that was designed to allow for the maximum number of participants to participate in its development.  As laws like PIPA and SOPA get enacted the desire for control seeks to throttle the opportunity. The goal should never be to restrict a technology but to enforce existing laws independent of the technology. Ironically, Peer-to-Peer communication, which had been a concern, has been on the decline in recent years and much of its technology has been applied to Self Healing networks and content delivery networks authorized by the content companies. If the law makes it government business to patrol the Internet the impact will be more solutions that enable tech savvy people to deliver whatever they want.  So what we have is a restrictive system that makes it harder for the masses to communicate and limits the public good.”

SOPA, is criticized because it would require search engines to stop indexing international websites with alleged ties to piracy. PIPA on the other had lacks verbiage that requires search engines to do this, but would allow for greater legal involvement and would not penalize copyright holders for erroneously pursuing suspected websites, even if they were shut off due to investigation. There are many other variations between the two, but these are the points most commonly cited.

 “Because Reddit could be considered a search engine, we would have to start basically filtering the links that we display,” Martin said. “We would have to start filtering items that people submit based on a black list from the attorney general coming from qualified plaintiffs. We’d have to keep those off our site since the way its set up is really cumbersome and it would cause a lot of work for us, and the liability of missing a few is pretty strong.”

As of right now SOPA has been shelved until a consensus can be reached in the Senate, but  PIPA is still on the table, and has enough of the same kind of laws that are of concern to many in the tech community. Giants like Google, Facebook (News - Alert), and Yahoo fear that such a law, if passed, could hold their search engine tools responsible for the content that it provides users, making them responsible for filtering results in such a way that they’re safer, but less complete. The same holds true for ISPs who may choose to cut ties with websites with suspected piracy ties for safety’s sake.

Martin continued saying, “There are a ton of moving parts here, and all the incentives are for service providers, who are basically intermediaries, to comply with qualified plaintiffs or a copyright holder. It’s not even clear who that could be. Could I be a copyright holder, if I took some photos and uploaded them? If either passed, a qualified plaintiff could go to a service provider and say in good faith that they have reason to believe that these sites are infringing and cut off their access to their ad networks. All of the incentives are setup so the ISPs, the Ad networks and service providers comply and comply immediately because there’s immunity when they do so.”

In a post-Arab spring world, freedom of speech on the Internet has received renewed focus, and any legislation that could potentially challenge that freedom is scrutinized more intensely than ever before. It’s perhaps for this reason that there is so much resistant to policies like this. The Internet has made a better connected and better informed population, and anything that would make them less networked and less informed is, for most, unacceptable.

Of the protest Ford remarked, “Today we live in a world where everyone is crying Wolf.  So when you are trying to impact the consciousness of the general public how do you get their attention?  The thing I like about Blackout Wednesday is that it’s not threatening us with unbelievable stories.  It’s calling out for attention.  I think that is a good thing”.

Today's blackout will come and go, and while it will reduce access to information for 24 hours, it’s symbolic of what could happen if bills like this isallowed to pass without the scrutiny. PIPA will go to the house floor for vote on Jan. 24, today in the time you would be doing research on Wikipedia, or staring at cat memes on ICanHasCheezBurger, take a moment, do some research, and get better informed on bills like SOPA and PIPA, your Internet freedom of speech could depend on it. PIPA will go to the house floor for vote on Jan. 24.

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