Let the Jimmy Wales' of the world live on

So I try to check Wikipedia in the morning to read up on information about the project which is finally underway, and to my dismay, I find it blocked out for the day. On a gleaming black background stands a lone 'W' with a snazzy paragraph explaining the protest Wikipedia is staging against the bill that has now been raised in Congress. "Imagine a world without free knowledge" sparkle the words that stifle all imagination. Think about it, when was the last time you needed an encyclopedia or even a newspaper to tell you what is going on in the world? When did the last time that a text book, with its rigid text, serve as a better means to help you understand complex problems than the explanations of hundreds of users on PagalGuy or similar websites? When did a funny URL proclaiming the shenanigans of your favourite celebrities last go unchecked or unnoticed? The point is not to attempt to establish the superiority of the binary word over the printed word, but to make you reflect on the possibility that perhaps, in a series of nuances largely unnoticed by most of us, our lives have taken a turn from a preference of fresh pages to a complete dependence on the instruments of electronic media. More so for younger generations than for us. Granted, there are a number of concerns that spring from this, but the internet and free information have been, over the last decade at least, more helpful to all of us than a magazine might have been to our fathers.

And now we come to an age where the credibility of content of the majority of sites we have grown to love, and yes their very existence, is in peril due to the gathering landslide of copyright infringement lawsuits. This too in a country( the US) where people, given the choice, would choose to buy a DVD rather than streaming a movie online! For the simple reason that it is affordable. One would shudder to think of the ramifications such an action would have, had it been effected in our country where the cost of a movie ticket in any one of the sundry multiplexes that are now putting the smaller theatres out of business, is more than can be afforded by a person earning an average Indian wage. Indeed the government would do better to put an end to operations of the myriad stores in Fancy Market or Chandni, that have come to be known as "Chor Bazaars" that willfully and proudly engage in piracy. And here we have a bill that, if passed, could impose a sentence of more than 5 years in prison to an unsuspecting user who streams a copyrighted work that costs more than $2,500 to license!

About 460 million users access Wikipedia every month. Along with Wiki, many other sites such as Reddit and Youtube would surely face severe restrictions, if they're not put out of business altogether with the passing of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) as law. The search for any written word on a search engine would not yield any websites that offer or have links to copyrighted material. This imposition on the freedom to share, view or voice opinions regarding content we enjoy, by big corporations that have the nerve to air a thousand ads on youtube that flash their abhorred presence on every tiny pixel of the screen while a video buffers, is tantamount to hypocrisy, and an act that may well stifle innovation and boost censorship. I was shocked to see a list of more than 350 companies that support SOPA. The fact that these companies still churn out profits significantly larger than what's needed to keep them going should not go beyond notice. This is not small industry facing the hazard of bankruptcy we're discussing here.

Blogging platforms are joining in on the mission to oppose the bill. Wordpress has introduced a little widget you can choose to add at the top of every post if you oppose the bill. However, some of the giants like Facebook and Google are yet to voice concerns over the issue, probably because of a selfish conviction that they will survive where some of the smaller social hubs might not. What may result from such a restriction is similar to the Firewall sponsored by the Chinese government where a host of sites are banned and several other made to pass through 'network sniffers' before being made available to the public. It is a simple question when it comes down to it - the freedom to enjoy democracy consistent with the principles of their first amendment or the interests of the big corporate machine that will continue to bully its way into higher profit with or without the proposed law.

(Only in the case of publishing houses do I feel for the industry. With the advent of e-books, the conventional paperbacks are fast losing their market and personally, I feel that it would be a tragedy to wake up to the light of a blank screen every morning rather than the smell of a fresh page. Yet, big companies like Amazon have come up with accessories like the Kindle to cater to the e-book reading segment, and then publishing houses like Bloomsbury seek to bring an end to the infringement, ie, the idea of an illicit e-book itself. The inconsistency of the proposed bill appears in more than one such example.)