Demotix could soon be blocked in the USA

UPDATE: Today, the 18th January 2012, some of the world's biggest websites, including Wikipedia, have blacked themselves out in protest against the proposed legislation. It looks like the House of Representatives has abandoned SOPA for the moment, but PIPA is still alive in the Senate. We hope US Demotix users will agree with us that this still represents a threat to free speech online.

We don’t often express political views here on the Demotix blog, so you know that when we do it must be important. We’re not on anyone’s side, except for yours - the people who benefit from free speech online.

That value, though, is under threat - and not from the usual suspects.

Internet censorship is usually associated with countries like China, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. But in the last few weeks, efforts in the U.S. Congress to introduce a “Great Firewall of America” using exactly the same technologies as the blocks built by the countries we’ve just mentioned have been stepped up.

Bills have been proposed in the House of Representatives and the Senate to allow DNS blocking of websites that are accused of hosting or facilitating copyright-infringing activities.

If either of these bills becomes law, then sites like Demotix will almost inevitably be blocked to visitors from the USA and have their revenue cut off by US-based payment processors.

Demotix categorically supports the right for every creator - of photojournalism, news, video, art, music, humour, christmas decorations, or anything else - to be acknowledged, credited and to profit from their work. That's what we do!

Any web-wide attempts to ensure creators can do all this better would get our full-throated and enthusiastic support. Unfortunately, this isn't what the proposed American bills would do.

If these bills were to pass, just one of our users uploading a photo containing a copyrighted image, or mistakenly copying a fragment of text from another website, could mean that the entire site would be blocked and for our payment processors, like Paypal, would be forbidden from doing business with us.

The bill in the House of Representatives is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The bill before the Senate is known as the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT-IP).

They both propose that copyright holders should be allowed to complain about websites that they believe infringe their copyright to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ).

The DoJ could then apply for a court order, obliging search engines, Domain Name System (DNS) providers, advertisers, payment services providers (like Paypal or Mastercard) and others to sever their relationships with that website.

In practice, this would mean: a website accused of infringement could no longer be reached by US-based users typing its name into the address bar of their web browsers. It would not be able to receive payments. It would not be able to sell advertisement space.

A site that’s unable to interact with people and services in the US is going to be at a gigantic disadvantage. US legislators are proposing to inflict this on the internet in the name of stopping copyright piracy - but what they’ll really be doing is stopping sites like Demotix from growing and flourishing.

The proposals would mean that a site could be punished with no chance to defend itself legally, losing months of advertising, e-commerce and other revenue.

Three prominent law professors wrote in the Stanford Law Review that:

“It would be not just ironic, but tragic, were the United States to join the ranks of these repressive and restrictive regimes, erecting our own “virtual walls” to prevent people from accessing portions of the world’s networks.”

And a whole slew of internet engineers, including “father of the internet” Vint Cerf, wrote in an open letter published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that:

“The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry.”

This goes to the heart of the SOPA debate: this legislation is being introduced to protect one industry, the entertainment business, which has failed to adapt to the new reality, and which is attempting to hold back change using its deep pockets and armies of lobbyists. It gives no consideration to the possible consequences for much more vital parts of the US and global economy and society.

We like to think that we’re providing you with a valuable service while supporting free speech and democracy.

We’re immensely happy to have built a sustainable business doing something we love and something that helps you to earn money from your sterling, original work. We want to keep doing it, without the threat of collective punishment hanging over us and all of you for the misguided actions of individual users who might upload copyrighted material - or just material that could be claimed to be copyrighted.

If you are a US citizen who uses Demotix, please consider helping us to continue working for you and for free speech, by contacting your Congressional representatives and telling them why you oppose this legislation.