SOPA Who? The Government Has Proven It Doesn't Need Laws to Censor the Internet

Ever since last week’s web blackout rattled the cage in Washington, droves of lawmakers have either backpedaled or abandoned ship altogether on the extremely controversial internet censorship bills, SOPA and PIPA. The effect was so severe that both bills have now been shelved indefinitely. But while one ship sinks, we tend to look past the others that have already made it to shore. A brief look at the recent past, however, suggests that laws granting the power to censor the internet are unnecessary, because the U.S. government already has a far more effective tool: Fear.

Suspiciously following what seemed to many a victory for free speech online, the Justice Department’s raid on the popular file-sharing hub MegaUpload last Thursday gives us yet another glimpse at this sad reality — that copyright owners don’t need laws like SOPA and PIPA when the U.S. government is already more than willing to act as their own personal hit squad. The site, which for some has long been a reputed haven for piracy, is merely the latest example: Comprising 4% of all internet traffic and hosting around 25 petabytes of data (that’s over 26 million gigabytes), it grew to enormous proportions in a relatively short amount of time, drawing the attention and ire of entertainment industry big wigs and the U.S. Department of Justice.

The site wasn’t only used by pirates, however. On the contrary, MegaUpload and other “cyberlocker” sites (Dropbox, Rapidshare, et al) have become the de facto method of quickly sending large files across the Internet, allowing millions of legitimate content creators to collaborate with a great deal of ease. For those of us still having nightmares about sending hard drives through the mail from last decade, these services were an indispensable boon: Fast, dependable and (in most cases) secure.

Unfortunately, dealing with grey areas and collateral damage has never been a strong suit for U.S. law enforcement, and innocent users once again have found themselves caught in the crosshairs. During the raid, which was executed at the behest of storied Megaupload foe Universal Music Group, the Justice Department indiscriminately seized all user data across the board, pirated or otherwise.

The funny thing is, this ‘sledgehammer’ approach to clamping down on illicit content is exactly the kind of thing that SOPA and PIPA were trying to codify into law. Yet even without that legislative ammunition at their side, the U.S. government was still able to strong-arm their way into running an international data bust that left millions of innocent users out in the cold.

Across the web, the chilling fallout of the MegaUpload takedown is still spreading. Uploaded.to, a competing site, has blocked all U.S. traffic for fear of a similar raid. Another similar site, Filesonic, has disabled sharing on their service altogether and even removed their affiliates program, which allowed users with popular content to share ad revenue. It would seem the dreaded lynchpin of Congress’ failed anti-piracy legislation — making any user-generated content a liability for websites and aggregators — is alive and well, even without the actual legislation to back it.

This wasn’t the first time heavy-handed and careless law enforcement has affected legitimate operators, and it won’t be the last. Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an especially high-powered division of the Department of Homeland Security, began ramping up Operation In Our Sites, a similarly ham-fisted effort that cracks down on illicit material online by seizing web domains without even a hint of due process.

The results were staggering: Feds wrongly seized legitimate domains, including a number of popular hip-hop sites and a network of over 73,000 blogs, under the allegation that they were “dedicated to infringing activities.” Even more frightening, 84,000 sites hosted under mooo.com were seized last February after the domain was mistakenly accused of hosting child pornography, leaving countless operators scrambling to set the record straight with their customers and ad providers.

What’s truly mind-boggling about all of this is that there seem to be no other areas — drone warfare, perhaps, notwithstanding — where indiscriminate action is taken on such a large scale despite an inevitable abundance of collateral damage. Moreover, these intimidation tactics don’t merely cause people to think twice about uploading or hosting pirated content — it turns the act of owning and operating a web domain into a liability. Meanwhile, the real pirates are simply forced to go one level deeper underground, and the cycle continues.

Protecting intellectual property rights is important. The thing is, it only makes sense when you’re protecting everyone’s rights equally. What can a startup or small business possibly say of aggressive antipiracy campaigns when predatory copyright claims are still a more significant threat to them? Can we still honestly believe that our current system of copyright is equipped to operate fairly? Or has it been hijacked and re-designed to protect only the rights of a deep-pocketed media elite at the expense of everyone else?

In the wake of the now-deceased SOPA and PIPA, the fog is beginning to clear. This deflected assault on free speech online, as symbolic and temporary a victory as it may have been, is beginning to open up a larger conversation about copyright law that mingles closely with Occupy Wall Street’s dialogues on wealth inequality and the corruptive influence of money in politics.

But in the same way that Occupy kept tabs on police officers who impinge on their right to demonstrate these ideas, the Internet must also be watchful for the abuses of copyright owners and law enforcement online. If not, we risk creating a future where a couple of bad eggs justify the threats and intimidation that keep legitimate ventures from even trying.