Foster Web Marketing's Stance on SOPA and PIPA

You’ve likely heard a lot about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), two bills that are making their way through Congress, over the past few weeks.  These bills are designed to prevent theft of copyrighted materials on the Internet and would provide the U.S. Department of Justice the ability to shut down sites that do not comply with copyright laws.  While well intentioned, we don’t believe this is the solution to stopping piracy on the web.  This does not suggest that we are in favor of making it easy to steal copyrighted material, only that there are other solutions that wouldn’t put the freedom of the Internet at stake. 

For example, under the proposed legislature sites like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube would be held liable for the content posted by their users.  These websites rely on user-generated content to exist and it would be impossible for them to monitor all of it closely enough to remain compliant. If you posted a video of yourself singing a Rolling Stones song on YouTube, both you and YouTube could face legal action.



But it wouldn’t just impact major social media networks.  If a spammy comment gets by your spam filter and onto your website, you could be liable.  Sweeping legislation like this will stifle the growth of the web industry and put a cog in the very effective and ethical web marketing that many small business use to brand themselves and bring in new customers.

As an Internet company and strident believers in web marketing, Foster Web Marketing wants to make our position on these bills very clear.  In no way do we support the theft or sharing of copyrighted material illegally, but we do not believe these bills will solve the issue.  Smart hackers will pirate content regardless of whether it can be posted on YouTube.  Innovation is the key.  When Napster was allowing millions of people free access to illegal music, the door was opened to iTunes…an easy, affordable way to distribute music legally.   Hollywood must make copyrighted music and video easily accessible in a legal way for people to be persuaded away from illegal activity. 

What do you think is a better solution?  Comment below!