The Protect IP Act, known as PIPA, will become a reality someday. That's what Alberto J. Azevedo, security expert, believes. He gave a speech about PIPA yesterday, during fisl13. To him, "the industry is not going to give up so easy", because "people with power will always struggle to keep their power", and many profit related interests are at stake.
The project was progressing in the American Senate, but wasn't taken ahead. In January this year a series of protests and demonstrations against the project and another related project (SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, to be voted that month in the House of Representatives) that included Wikipedia, which remove for one day its english page in a protest. Basically, law projects, if approved, would allow for blocking of websites, including those who host third-party content (such as Facebook and Youtube), in case of copyright violation. Search websites such as Google and Yahoo would be forced to remove links to pages that display protected content without authorization.
"I saw people in Facebook saying "we won!". I thought, god, we didn't. I might have won a battle, but not the war". to support his argument, Azevedo said that "unfortunately, there are two pilars that rule the world: the first and most important is the money. Second is politics. But politics isn't done by idealistic people, but selfish, who worry about getting re-elected again and again". The phonographic industry is a sponsor of many American politics campaigns, which gives them strength to pass copyright laws. Therefore, he concluded that "sooner or later PIPA is going to be a reality".
Mobilization
In the end he said one of the best ways to oppose is by voting, researching the past actions of the candidate - he said this at the same time as he showed a slide with a picture of Darth Vader as a condidate in a voting booth, which took great laugh from the audience.
He also encouraged people to mobilize. "Use the power of the Internet, but let stuff just inside the Internet. Take it to the streets".
Written by Pedro Faustini