Posted by
Imagine that Congress passed a law setting up a procedure that could
require ordinary citizens like you to remove telephone numbers from your
phone book or from the “contacts” list in your phone. What about a
policy that cut off the phone lines to an entire building because some
of its tenants used the phone to plot thefts or fraud? Would it be okay
with you if the user of the numbers coming out of your phone records or
the tenants of the cut-off building had been adjudged “rogue” users of
the phone?
Cutting off phone lines is the closest familiar parallel to what
Congress is considering in two bills nicknamed “SOPA” and “PIPA”—the “Stop Online Piracy Act” and the “PROTECT IP Act.”
Julian Sanchez has vigorously argued several points about these bills. Here, I’ll try to describe what they try to do to the Internet.
Simplifying, every computer and server has an IP (or “Internet Protocol”) address,
which is a set of numbers that uniquely identify its location on the
Internet. The IP address for the server hosting Cato’s Spanish language
site, elcato.org, for example, is 67.192.234.234.
Now, these numbers are hard to remember, so there is a system that
translates IP addresses into something more familiar. That’s the domain
name system, or “DNS.” The domain name system takes the memorable name
that you type into the address bar of your computer, such as elcato.org,
and it looks up the IP address so you can be forwarded along to the IP
address of your choice.
One of the major ideas behind SOPA and PIPA is to cut Internet sites
that violate copyright out of the domain name system. No longer could
typing “elcato.org” get you to the Web site you wanted to visit. Much of
the debate has been about the legal process for determining whether to
strike out a domain name.
But preventing a domain name lookup doesn’t take the site off the
Internet. It just makes it slightly harder to access. You can prove it
to yourself right now by copying “67.192.234.234″ (without the quotes)
and plugging it into your address bar. (The Internet is complicated.
Some of you might be directed to other Cato sites.) Then come back here
and read on, por favor!
The government would require law-abiding citizens to “black out”
phone numbers—or Internet service providers to do the same with domain
names—for this little effect on wrongdoing? It doesn’t make sense. The
practical burdens on the law-abiding Internet service provider would be
large. “Blacking out” an entire building—just like a Web site—would cut
off the lawful communications right along with the unlawful ones. It’s
through-the-looking-glass information control, with enormous potential
to obstruct entirely lawful communications and impinge on First
Amendment rights.
Which is why many Web sites today are “blacking out” in protest. In various ways, sites like Craigslist.org, Wikipedia,
and many others are signaling to their visitors that Congress is
threatening the core functioning of the Internet with bills like SOPA
and PIPA. And threatening all of our freedom to communicate.
The Internet is not the government’s to regulate. It is an agreement on a set of protocols—a
language that computers use to talk to one another. That language is
the envelope in which our communications—our First-Amendment-protected
speech—travels in hundreds of different forms.
The Internet community is growing in power. (Let’s not be
triumphal—government authorities will use every wile to maintain
control.) Hopefully the people who get engaged to fight SOPA and PIPA
will recognize the many ways that the government regulates and limits
information flows through technical means. The federal government
exercises tight control over electromagnetic spectrum, for example, and
it claims authority to impose public-utility-style regulation of
Internet service provision in the name of “net neutrality.”
Under the better view—the view of freedom behind opposition to SOPA and PIPA—these things are not the government’s to regulate.
No comments:
Post a Comment