Sopa y Pipa: Media and Music Industries vs. Internet Providers and Search Engines

On Wednesday 18 of January, Wikipedia carried out the first blackout online against two bills: Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa)introduced by the US House Representatives and Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) introduced by the US Senate. 

Both bills aim to prevent online piracy by demanding a series of measures to search engines and internet providers such as blocking web sites that are claimed to do piracy, especially those located outside the US. Another controversial part of the bill establishes that anyone found guilty of streaming copyright material 10 or more times within six months should go to jail.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia have already made public statement accusing the bills to be an attempt against free doom, to benefit media and music industries rather than actually protecting creativity. Nevertheless, the Chair of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales has taken further measures by calling for one day of online blackout as protest against the bill; this initiative was proposed first by the popular social media website Reddit.

The White House has already made publicly that it has serious reservation to Sopa and calls stakeholders to discuss the implications of the bill. However, media and music industries has already opposed to the White House move. The News Corporation owner, Rupert Murdoch, responded to the Obama administration by claiming that web sites such as Google “streams movies free” and “sells [adverts] around them”. In response, Google has said that is engaged to fight piracy “every day”. 

Sopa and Pipa controversy is possible the biggest battle between internet providers-search engines and the media- music industry so far. The centre of this discussion is the way how intellectual property rights, creativity and innovation should be protected and encouraged. The US government will be obligated to take side in this discussion. The statement of the White House seems to be supportive to internet companies, but it has not actually endorsed them, at least not publicly. In an electoral year in the US, this controversy could be crucial as in the previous US presidential election websites such as Twitter and Facebook were a key element for Barack Obama to win the election. In countries like Colombia, this discussion should be observed especially since the Santos’ administration drop off the Lleras bill last year in a poor attempt to regulate piracy and access to internet in Colombia.