The Stop Online Piracy Act SOPA and its senate companion Protect IP Act PIPA are causing all sorts of bother on the internet today with sites such as Wikipaedia closing down in protest.

Superficially, this is about Silicon Valley disrupting the media industry. We’ve seen the effect of downloads on the Music industry and the Film and Television industries don’t want any repeat of that scenario thank you very much!

The case of the start up band who have to pay for their rehearsal space, pay to print up CDs and Publicity material, hoping to make at least some money back through sales, only to have their hopes dashed by cynical downloaders purloining their content for free is also well heard. I am a photographer and have found my photographs on Google, adorning sites I’ve never heard of. A magazine recently offered me the princely sum of £2 for one picture – an improvement on last year when two magazines with high street distribution deals printed photographs of mine for no fee! At first glance, this embattled artist is tempted to agree that SOPA is not a bad thing.

But of course embattled artists are not the only losers, and if any government is passing legislation solely to protect the rights of struggling artists, frankly I’ll eat my hat. There are other players with much more to lose and this is why there is such a fuss about SOPA.

This debate is about control. Control over the internet. Or to put it crudely, delivery of the internet into the hands of the vested interests providing content through established channels like print, film and CD. The proposed legislation allows a body that alleges copyright theft to have a web site closed down without due process and without evidence. ie. Guilty until proved innocent.

Secondary liability ensures that link sharing sites such as Reddit, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg etc will be liable for prosecution if they are found to be distributing links to copied or pirated material. In this scenario even Facebook and Google+ would be threatened. In effect, this makes any company hosting pirated or copied material or links to that material vulnerable to frivolous litigation like never before. Big companies have very deep pockets and will have no qualms about disrupting the pretenders to their throne by forcing expensive lawsuits to be defended.

What has this to do with the US Government bill? The sponsorship of government advising think tanks by corporate interests has been extensively documented as has the use of lobbyists by various industries to influence government thinking. In the UK, where I live, the extent to which media corporation News International influenced successive General Elections can only be guessed at, but it is well documented that Rebekah Wade was a regular guest at the homes and offices of successive wannabe prime ministers. No coincidence when the Murdoch owned Sun, News of the World and Times all backed the same horse.

Furthermore, the subsequent appointment of Murdoch fan Jeremy Hunt to the Ministry of Culture and the decision to allow Murdoch’s bid for BSkyB to be waved through could be interpreted as payback for the press support for the Tories before the election. It was only stopped by furious protests from the public and one newspaper’s, The Guardian, tireless quest to expose the illegal activities taking place in the News of the World under the auspices of Rebekah Wade. Nobody should remain in any doubt that corporate interests influence and in some cases dictate government policy.

Back in the US, SOPA and its little brother PIPA are merely the instruments by which the corporate interests that control the old media, hope to wrest control of the new away from Silicon Valley. It should be resisted at all costs, not because we prefer anarchy, but because democracy is founded on freedom of choice and if there is no freedom of information then there is no freedom of choice. I don’t mind sacrificing a few photographs to uphold that principle.

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