Stop Online Piracy - but maybe another way?
Today (January 18th) many of you may have noticed Wikipedia was blacked out (shut down) as well as Craigslist - Google and Mozilla censored themselves...All this was in protest to the SOPA bill (Stop Online Piracy Act) that is in congress right now.
Do I think piracy a global issue? The answer obviously is yes. Should the US government have absolute power to shut down global websites with no questions asked? This is not quite as obvious. SOPA would allow the government to censor and shut down websites that might have copyright infringements but would allow the US government to sidestep due process, a kind of shoot-first-ask-questions-later power.
Educationally this causes some worries with websites like the Open Coursware project which shares textbooks online between colleges or Wikipedia which, although monitored, is all public built (and not everyone understands copyright law).
There are definite first amendment issues here at risk as well. In 2011 we saw the fall of more than a few dictatorships in countries like Egypt that literally turned off the internet in their countries to stop citizens from grouping up and organizing. At this point the internet and communication is too big to stop. With that said, there are still illegitimate websites that are pirating and uploading copyrighted intellectual property. How should these sites be policed? Who should do the policing? These are important questions and as this digital frontier continues to evolve, our students will most likely be the ones in the future with the answers...