The urge to regulate copyright is understandable but the draconian means proposed are out of all proportion
There was a brief return to the boom times for dusty reference libraries yesterday, when the greatest invention of the last decade suddenly ceased to function. Wikipedia, the website that now serves as the planet's collective memory, pulled the plug on its English-language pages for the day, in protest against US legislation that threatens to entangle the web.
The two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and Protect IP in the Senate, aim to clamp down on digital copyright violations. That urge is understandable, but the draconian means proposed are out of all proportion. There would be an onus on search engines, ISPs and suppliers of the wider web infrastructure to block not merely individual pages that trespass on intellectual property, but entire sites which may (even unwittingly) play host to such transgressions. The asymmetric drafting of the law would make it prudent for them to shut down first, and ask questions only later. Websites, blogs, even community chatrooms, could be sued to destruction for linking to anything which turns out to involve "piracy". That crime is less cleanly defined than first appears, seeing as aggressive rights holders can sue if the briefest flash of an image or a semi-audible blast of music pops up in unrelated content.
The practical risks to Wikipedia itself are debatable. Its claim to have shunned its usual neutrality to campaign against an existential threat is rather dramatic. But the letter of these laws would indubitably expose all those hyperlinked footnotes to technical risk. More fundamentally, the crackdown would cut against the net culture which Wikipedians exemplify: open, collaborative, quick – and quickly corrected. The proposed restrictions on the freedom to link are central, for hyperlinks are the very warp and weft of the web. In an internet where referring to something meant assuming responsibility for it, everyone would be forever glancing over their shoulder.
After the White House sounded caution on the bills, Rupert Murdoch used Twitter to damn the president for siding with "Silicon Valley paymasters" who threaten "plain thievery". Perhaps he has not thought about whether Twitter could exist if every link had to be pre-approved – or perhaps he doesn't care. But as a global mogul he really should give some thought to the regulatory arms race that could be triggered if the US starts blocking foreign websites in a cavalier way.
Elected on the crest of a wave of activism which was largely organised through the web, Barack Obama is being prudent to strike a worried note; let us hope he proves principled, too, and vetoes if need be. But it would be even better if the burgeoning pressure from web users forced Congress to rethink. Then electronic citizenship will truly have come of age.