They’re the talk of many blogs, websites, and every other kind of internet or free speech advocate. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) have caused a mess in the political realm. Yesterday was SOPA blackout day, where hundreds of blogs, websites, and Twitter feeds fell silent to oppose the controversial bills going through both houses of Congress.
So, why am I talking about it on a marketing blog? If you didn’t know, this bill has some really serious implications for everyone who uses the internet for anything at all. Marketing professionals need to have their voices heard as well, because there is a lot at stake. We’re going to look at four of the ways that marketing professionals can be affected if these bills were to pass.
Imagine this on your marketing techniques. That's what SOPA and PIPA would do. Image courtesy of walknboston via Flickr Creative Commons
-It doesn’t effectively discern between legitimate content and pirated content. The intention of SOPA/PIPA is stop piracy, which, in and of itself is a great thing! Problem is, the government is going about it all wrong. Effectively, if a website gets one complaint about piracy, they could get blacklisted. Problem is, this is ineffective. If the site is blacklisted, just use the IP address, because there’s nothing blocking that at all.
- We could lose some of our primary marketing venues. Websites who link to other websites that have even one complaint against them could get penalized because of SOPA/PIPA. Worst part? They take a strike first, investigate later approach. So, that penalty hurting your website because you linked to a legitimate website that someone got mad at? Won’t be fixed till months later when the government realized that they made a mistake, if it’s fixed at all.
- Social media would be restricted. This is probably the scariest part to me as a marketing professional. What do you mean I can’t use Wikipedia or YouTube? Websites that share information such as Wikipedia and Youtube would effectively grind to a halt in sharing content because people would be paranoid about what they could and could not post. Free speech implications, anyone?
- Any online activity would be able to be monitored, including those involving personal information such as account and credit card numbers. The FBI, government venues, and internet service providers (ISP’s) would have direct access due to the encryption laws that would be in place. This means that there would be no gateways to protect an online customer. This would make our information easier to get to by those really smart hackers, and internet security for any website would be out the window.
So, yes, if you as a marketing professional don’t understand this bill, these are just a few implications of it. If you want your voice to be heard on this important issue, contact your Congressman or Senator and let them know how you feel. It’s an election year, so they are listening. Have a great rest of your day, and we’ll see you here tomorrow!
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Excellent SOPA explanation Marti!
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