Stop Online Piracy Act

GoDaddy lost over 21,000 domains last week in a matter of 2 days. There are people who think it directly relates to the fact that GoDaddy supports the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

SOPA was a bill introduced on October 26th of this year, and it gives U.S. law enforcement more freedom when investigating online trafficking, intellectual property theft, and other cybercrimes.

The fact that 21,000 people left GoDaddy in protest of them supporting this Act, shows us that there are alot of people who still believe that online piracy is a right granted to us in the First Amendment. Some people feel as though downloading music is a right we have, and copying the music is also a right.

Do alot of people download music for free illegally? Yes. Do alot get caught? Yes. Do alot get away with it? Yes. There are too many people to catch at this point. I feel as though the moment has passed, and a critical mass has been reached to the point where it is useless to try to stop it, apparently the House of Representatives does not.

This number doesn't show us all the people who disagree with SOPA and who are members of GoDaddy, it shows us most of the radical ones who fall into this overlapping demographic. For instance, I personally agree that people should be able to download anything for free, and I also own a GoDaddy domain, yet I am not so passionate or extreme that I would cancel my account and change my domain because of my own belief. I also know several people in the same boat as me who would not make such a drastic move, but it is interesting to see the ones who have done it, and to see the numbers like the ones we have seen in the news articles.

I am not surprised that people have been so polarized by this issue, but I am surprised at how long it has been going on, and I wonder how much longer this battle will continue. Laws have been established declaring downloading to be illegal, yet there are probably more people downloading illegally than buying legally. Does this mean there will be a "War on Downloads" as there has been a "War on Drugs"? How will it end? What will be the final solution? "Legalize it!" right? It's funny the way history repeats itself. Nobody learns, nothing changes except the environment and subject matter. The problems and solutions remain the same. Can we try to learn once, if even the hard way, and apply the solution to any subsequent issues that are even remotely related to it? Just to try? Or should we just rinse and repeat every single time?

Anyway, the purpose of today's blog was to point out the SOPA and it's purpose, and why it was put into place: to Stop online piracy.

To me, it sounds like the cyber-equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act, which gave the feds more freedom to investigate suspected terrorists. In this case, law enforcement is given more help investigating cyber-criminals. It scares me that so many people would disagree with helping law enforcement to the point that they would red-flag themselves and leave GoDaddy.

If I were part of the team responsible for hunting down cyber-criminals and just handed this new freedom, the first people I would investigate to warm-up and practice using the SOPA, would be the list of people who left GoDaddy.

Sources: CNet - 21,000 Domains Transfer out of GoDaddy