SOPA: Who Is To Blame?

LvMIC:

If you had the pleasure of visiting internet giants such as Google or Wikipedia today, you may have noticed something amiss on their respective homepages.  In what has to be the largest internet protest in history, “blackout” symbolism is being used en mass to garner attention for an issue that quite literally threatens the free flow of information on the web as we know it.  Even to this author’s surprise, the Stop Online Piracy Act protest has worked; or has at least for the time being.

The Stop Online Privacy Act is of course the controversial bill currently being discussed by our glorious and endowed public leaders in the  U.S. House of Representatives.  In short the bill:

aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content.
SOPA’s main targets are “rogue” overseas sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay, which are a trove for illegal downloads. Go to the The Pirate Bay, type in any current hit movie or TV show like “Glee,” and you’ll see links to download full seasons and recent episodes for free.
Content creators have battled against piracy for years — remember Napster? — but it’s hard for U.S. companies to take action against foreign sites. The Pirate Bay’s servers are physically located in Sweden. So SOPA’s goal is to cut off pirate sites’ oxygen by requiring U.S. search engines, advertising networks and other providers to withhold their services.
That means sites like Google wouldn’t show flagged sites in their search results, and payment processors like eBay’s PayPal couldn’t transmit funds to them.

This places a huge burden on large internet companies such as search engines as they are now forced to police themselves for what is essentially a non-crime.  It’s the equivalent of fining or imprisoning someone who gives a good recommendation on where to score hard drugs; irregardless of your feelings on whether drugs should be fully legal or intellectual property should be bestowed with the same protections of tangible, physically scarce property.

And like all governmental power grabs, SOPA is financed and supported by big business looking to utilize the coercive apparatus of the state to do its bidding.  In this case, major media companies and groups such as Time Warner and the Motion Picture Association of America are throwing their weight behind the measure.  But as any student of revisionist history realizes, this is a predictable course of events when considering the conniving dynamics and mutual relationship between wealthy special interests and government power centers.  One look at the events leading to the inception of the Federal Reserve or America’s unnecessary foray into global conflict reveals as much.  Like Hayek said, “socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working class movement.”

While the movie, record, and television industry deserve much condemnation for their colluding with the den of thieves, also known as Washington D.C., the finger of blame isn’t squarely on them.  For it is the natural tendency of leviathan to grow in leaps and bounds as it inserts its parasitic tentacles further into the reaches of private life and civil society.  It is those who give credence to the institution known as the state to which blame for acts such as SOPA reside.  The pamphleteer who rallies on the Capital steps for such vices as public housing, universal healthcare, and food stamps paves the way for SOPA.  The editorialist who pens heart wrenching pleas for increased tax rates or a bigger public education budgets is guilty of clearing the path toward serfdom.

The state lives and grows much like weeds in an unkempt garden.  It is only the gardener who values his cherished plot of life that remains ever vigilant to ward off intruding sprouts.  And like the ever alert gardener, it is the job of those classical liberals or anarcho-capitalists to remain steadfast in their belief of a very limited role of the state or support for its abolition all together.  As long as men remain fallible, public office will be a tempting outlet to wield power.  It is up to those who place liberty, a strict protection from coercion, and the freedom of man to do as he pleases without infringing on the right of his fellow man as their highest ideals to stay vigilant and not give into temptation of using the state further ends outside these.  Prosperity breeds from these ideas.  General destitution comes in their absence.

SOPA is a byproduct of the negligence paid in part by a public that seeks to use the state as a means to transfer themselves the wealth or liberty of another.  Blame for the act’s consideration rests firmly upon their shoulders.