Red Hat: SOPA Threatens Innovation, Economic Growth
SOPA and PIPA in its current state threaten the innovation that drives open source projects.
Wednesday in a blog, Red Hat offered its two cents concerning the drama surrounding SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate). The company points out that now isn't really the time to introduce the bills, as corporations, small independent companies and even the government itself is working hard to rebuild confidence in the American economy. Red Hat -- along with most of America -- worries that these two bills, if passed, could effect jobs and innovation nationwide. Not only could they break the Internet, they could break a fragile economy trying to recover.
"As America's – and the world's – largest and most successful provider of open source solutions and an S&P 500 company, Red Hat is proud to be headquartered in Raleigh," Red Hat said. "Our high-quality, affordable technology solutions are found throughout the mission-critical IT architecture of the financial, defense, transportation, telecommunications and most other industry sectors.
Our success and, increasingly, the economic success of our state is the product of the encouragement of open innovation and collaboration. A vital ingredient of this success involves leveraging the tremendous gains that the Internet has brought through online collaboration, software development and sharing of ideas."
"In a single generation, the Internet has transformed our world to such an extent that it is easy to forget its miraculous properties and take it for granted," Red Hat continues. "It's worth reminding ourselves, though, that our future economic growth depends on our ability to use the Internet to share new ideas and technology. Measures that block the freedom and openness of the Internet also hinder innovation. That poses a threat to the future success of Red Hat and other innovative companies. The sponsors of SOPA and PIPA claim that the bills are intended to thwart web piracy. Yet, the bills overreach, and could put a website out of business after a single complaint. Web sites would vanish, and have little recourse, if they were suspected of infringing copyrights or trademarks."
Red Hat hits the nail on the head. The bills would seemingly launch a virtual dictatorship that would allow enforcers to shoot first and ask questions later. However the good news is that there's growing opposition from all corners of the Web. The White House itself has even expressed serious concerns over the language used in the bills that "reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
"Six prominent Senators, including the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, who previously supported the bill called for delay in consideration of PIPA due to a variety of unresolved, outstanding issues," Red Hat reports. "On the House side, the Majority Leader has dashed the momentum of SOPA by delaying consideration until consensus is reached. SOPA and PIPA remain on the Congressional agenda, despite these developments. Even as legislators work to address the problems of 'rogue' web sites, Congress owes us a solution that addresses those concerns without killing the web’s economic engine and shutting down the future of innovation. SOPA and PIPA aren’t that solution."
"We all need to remain vigilant as work on these bills continues," the company concludes. "The momentum has slowed, but supporters of SOPA and PIPA continue to push hard. Opponents should make sure their representatives hear their voices."
The moment you start blocking access to foreign websites you know there is going to be a retaliation.
You block our sites, so we block yours.
We have a lot to loose in this game and it is all to 'protect' the Limousine and Red Carpet world of poor musicians, Actors and Studios.
How about for, say, 1 week we do not buy any music and do not go to any movie ?
That's the kind of blackout that will get the attention of the right people.
Swap "internet" to "world" and we can start talking about the broken and over-ill-mannered-abused IP system.
Well, fight for your rights, USA people! Don't let the un-educated old dogs go shooting with blind eyes.
Cheers!
If someone makes an infringement complaint, who do they complain to? What kind of proof do they have to provide to substantiate their complaint? Some new govt agency?
What level is this enforced at to block an "offender"? A DNS block? Won't this just make USA based DNS useless and people will turn to foreign DNS by default? Will ISPs just not do DNS after time? Will they have some sort of "hard" block in place that inspects packets? Can't encrypted proxies and such work around this? What about Tor? Will the US have to use DPI to actually enforce this? It seems all of this cat and mouse has already been addressed with the GFC.
Or is this going to be done more by the "law" approach? Serving subpeonas and such. And I wonder how this would work if you are remoting to a foreign computer outside of US law.
The moment you start blocking access to foreign websites you know there is going to be a retaliation.
You block our sites, so we block yours.
We have a lot to loose in this game and it is all to 'protect' the Limousine and Red Carpet world of poor musicians, Actors and Studios.
How about for, say, 1 week we do not buy any music and do not go to any movie ?
That's the kind of blackout that will get the attention of the right people.
well not going to the movies will be easy considering there are no good movies coming out for months at the most. and don't start with the star wars 3D crap remakes. they are a joke
Well, that's exactly what he means. Those are exactly the type of movies we'd want to boycott. They're utterly blatant cashcows being put out purely for the sake of lining the studio's pocket. Actors and musicians these days get a PITTANCE compared to the total profit from albums and movies. (Though a Pittance from projects like those are still about 10 times more than the average american makes...) All the money goes to the studio, the publisher, or the record label. Which is why they have no hesitations about shoving more piles of crap down our throat and jacking up the price every time they do it.
There are more alternatives to pirating every movie, album, and video game than just simply buying it all. The whole world doesn't exist to consume what the entertainment industry is selling (though they seem to think so.)
Last read, no proof needed, only a simple complaint.
The law will be enforced by government controlled servers/switches/routers....same way China filters web content.
Don't put up a link without a short explanation what it is about.
It's just plain uncourteous.
Sorry about that, the guy is basically going about how CNET a division of CBS had the exclusive right to distribute the file sharing programs that started all this mess in the first place
I have another idea that builds on yours. If the bills pass, you people could post a chart from Tom's Hardware on the MPAA/RIAA's site, and then Bestofmedia could claim copyright infringement. Ka-boom.
Replace "1 week" in the second to last sentence with "a few years" and you have my stance on this.
I don't need mind-numbing TV or movies. I can just pick up a book.