Today, Congress held hearings on the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). There’s probably not too many reading this that would argue with the goals laid out in the titles of those two bills, but don’t be deceived. It’s not the objective of the bills we object to, but rather the means. As the Vimeo blog today notes, both bills

would give the power to the government and content owners to censor and block websites that host even just one piece of content that allegedly infringes a copyright…a much more severe House bill was just introduced and is set up to pass soon if we don’t take action NOW. These bills threaten the very essence of the web and the communities that have risen from it.

As an area studies scholar and someone who believes that in general open and free communications between cultures around the world is a good thing, I’d like to point out another objection to this law. It has the potential to greatly complicate my research and the free flow of knowledge by throwing up barriers to information that the internet only recently opened. My research delves into constructions of identity through literature, popular culture and the performing arts, and it always a great relief when I find useful research materials online. The internet has made music videos, movies, the popular press, and so much more available to me online from my living room or wherever my computer is.

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It is always a joy to find this stuff. Unfortunately it is often posted on the same sites as illegal content from the US or Europe. Not all countries have the same intellectual property laws as the United States, nor do they share the philosophies on which the laws are based. So these sites based abroad may not fully understand that the material they post is violating international copyright laws. Now if American ISPs block access to those sites because they’ve posted a Brittney Spears video or a clip from Shrek dubbed into Moroccan Arabic, then access to everything is lost to the American researchers. There are so many unforeseen implications to these laws. The entertainment industry would be better of worrying less about protecting themselves from acts of piracy that can’t be having much impact on the bottom line, and instead concentrate on producing better content.