The Distortion of Sharing

In the physical world, if you wanted to come over and listen to music  with me, you don’t have to buy a copy of the music.In fact, I could even give you the cds and movies that I bought, and you could take them home and use them whenever you want. But then, I wouldn’t have it. And that is where the term sharing has become distorted.  If I give the media to you, but I still have a copy that  moves beyond sharing to piracy. This has a huge impact in economics as well, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, with the music industry losing half of its profits in just one year. The two-chamber or “bicameral” setup of Congress operating on a standard envisioned in 1787,  is currently debating on this topic and how to combat this problem of online piracy and intellectual property theft. They have drafted a bill with  two sections: “Combating Online Piracy” and “Additional Enhancements to Combat Intellectual Property Theft.” The “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA)  is still being debated in the House, with what seems like a large battle ahead of them.  This bill, as currently written, would give the U.S. Attorney General the power of disabling the  DNS (domain name server) records that point to suspect or illegal sites. A large number of security experts believe that the bill could disrupt the underlying architecture of the Internet. The Protect  Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).is SOPA’s Senate companion bill that is still in debate  in the chamber. is intended to combat “rogue” websites operated oversea but offers a wide spread power that will  affect people worldwide. This bill  has drawn so much opposition that most senators have withdrawn support and news sources such as Techspot.com are reporting that PIPPA has collapsed. I am opposed to the bills as written right now due to the ambiguity of the power and its usage. The adverse effects on the backbones of the Internet architecture are also a major concern. I believe the bills need re working and also software developers need to get more innovative when it comes to intellectual property rights and security. Come on application developers and investors, all these apps for whip noises and beer mugs when we need a good way to secure movies music and videos.