The SOPA/PIPA/USA Patriot conundrum

Now that the furor over congress' proposals to restrict access to content on the Internet is winding down and temporarily placed on the back burner, we have the opportunity to take a better look at SOPA's (House – Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA's (Senate – Protect Intellectual Property Act) impact on our American freedoms.

This is especially important when viewed within our already restricted freedoms under the Unifying and Strengthening America to Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA Patriot) Act of 2001.

SOPA and PIPA, introduced in the House by Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and co-sponsored in the Senate by Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), are not really an effort to strengthen already more than strong laws against plagiarism and creative piracy, rather an effort to increase the profits of major Wall Street entertainment industry corporations. Each "click" means money.

Many, if not most, artists are strongly against SOPA/PIPA. While the unapproved use of other people's creativity and work is something no one can favor, the unabashed greed of the Wall Street crowd is something that also cannot be tolerated when that greed silences creativity, restricts freedoms of expression and speech, and generates mechanisms for governmental control of Internet access by Americans.

Coupled with the USA Patriot Act, which already enables government access to personal information transmitted by phone, internet, satellite, or other means, without legal due process, SOPA/PIPA is downright scary.

Drafted and pushed through congress by the George Bush in 2001, there is nothing "patriotic" about the USA Patriot Act. Its sole purpose was to bypass existing privacy laws, those rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, in the name of expediency.

You access an international website, make an international phone call, send an email to someone or some business outside the United States, to include Canada, or even mention anything outside the United States in electronic correspondence, the USA Patriot Act enables the federal government to access and monitor your transmission and from there to gather other information on you they may deem appropriate.

Couple the USA Patriot Act with the proposed restrictions on freedom to access websites with "inappropriate" content, as determined by the federal government, and we guarantee ourselves a "big brother" environment not unlike China, Russia, Iran, Syria and other countries where the government controls all media and information exchange. We criticize China for restricting internet access of its citizens, yet congress is ready to do that very same thing to Americans.

Unfettered access to knowledge guarantees freedom of speech and civil liberties, and thus democracy. The global shift toward increased civil liberties and the democratic movements in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and currently ongoing across the Middle East as seen in the "Arab Spring" revolutions, were a direct result of citizen's unrestricted access to the global information network. That access enabled people to better understand the values and concepts of personal liberty and personal choice, and force change. Access that we hope will bring changes in places like North Korea and Iran.

Combining the monitoring of U.S. citizens authorized under the USA Patriot Act with the information access restrictions proposed in SOPA/PIPA is not just a step, but a giant leap, toward a "big brother" government that can limit information access to what the government deems best. Be that the type of religion you may practice, the type of programming you may watch on television, to the things you may purchase.

Plus, this type of monitoring is also expensive. The USA Patriot Act created tens of thousands of new federal government positions in intelligence, defense, justice and homeland security, in addition to additional tens of thousands of federally funded contractors in direct support federal operations. Enacting SOPA/PIPA would likely create thousands more. We don't need that, and its interesting that those same congressional representatives, like U.S. Rep. Rich Nugent, currently advocating for smaller government are the same ones who strongly endorsed USA Patriot operations and funding, and are advocates of SOPA/PIPA. They also receive significant campaign funding from the large Wall Street corporations supporting SOPA/PIPA.

These threats to our civil liberties are not dead. Rep. Smith plans to reintroduce SOPA in the House in February and keep pushing for restrictions to Americans' internet and media access. We must remain vigilant, in this case over our congressional representatives, to insure our continued freedoms as guaranteed by the Constitution.