The PROTECT IP Act

The Protect IP Act (full text) enables the government and copyright holders to compel DNS providers, ISPs, search engines and advertisers to censor sites hosting copyright or trademark infringements. They're going to make linking to pirated material a crime.

Media companies want this because it's easier to go after the intermediaries, rather than the infringers, especially those outside the US. It's not that different from the Great Firewall of China.

This is the second attempt, the previous incarnation COICA having been introduced in September of last year. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), held up that legislation and is trying to do the same again. Cheers to Ron Wyden.

Larry Downes provides an excellent summary of the "full-scale war between content distributors and everyone else" in his Law of Disruption blog, including the property seizure tactics of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customers Enforcement division, a name straight out of Orwell.

The media industries, everyone agrees, are in the fight of their lives. These businesses rely for profitability on the controlled distribution of information goods whose individual copies have a marginal cost that keeps getting closer to zero.

The EFF has a couple articles on the PROTECT IP act and a petition.

One commenter asked, "Why is the attorney general wasting precious tax dollars enforcing corporate plutocracy?"

The real question

A lot changes when the costs of production and distribution are approaching zero. The question we should be asking is this: What still has value?

• The creation itself - the skill, insight and artistic judgement necessary to make movies, music, or writing that doesn't suck.
• The ability to sift through mountains of dreck to find the good stuff. The value of the filter goes way up in the new environment.
• The community? A viable place to discuss. I'm pretty sure that the difference between Quora and You-Tube comments has value.

Legislating without a clear idea of what's valuable in the new environment will lead to useless and harmful laws that burden legitimate service providers while only slightly inconveniencing pirates - something like requiring every new car to come with a trunk full of horseshoes to protect the blacksmiths.