It’s me, the other intern, and the only boy Beaufort has seen for many many internship moons. It only took a few hours for the past interns, yet seven weeks to the day later here I am also tossing my hat into the blogosphere. I can blame it on all the amazing project opportunities that have gotten thrown my way but in reality we all know that I have continually failed to come up with a compelling topic and a crafty moniker (which we definitely now know that I have still failed to do…Beaustie Boy? Really?) Just when I thought, “Aha, I’m ready to write my blog about Pulitzer Book predictions and book lists!” Word Press blacked out before I could say “The Marriage Plot.”
One of the daily tasks that I have been performing for the past month and change is to track marketing updates for most of our authors. One name that floods into my inbox morning after morning is Gary Shapiro, CEO of CEA (hehe). For weeks now I have been perusing and filing away news articles Gary has written about SOPA and PIPA, which at first simply had my Spanish speaking mind thinking of soups and pipes. After about 50 more articles over the course of a month I figured I should know what I was reading about and, evidently, what everyone else was talking about.
The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act have elicited some strong responses from Senators and Congressmen to bloggers and your everyday Google searcher. On Wednesday, major websites like Wikipedia and Word Press shut their digital doors. Google even prompted visitors with a petition to send to Congress. The day of darkness forced everyone to imagine a world without Internet (or a trip down memory lane to the pre-Apple days). While most are against intellectual property theft and multimedia piracy, both acts just do not provide enough protection against false accusations with potential for abuse of the legislation to become out of control. In one of his most recent articles for Fox, Gary even declares victory for the American people, whose collective voice was too resounding to ignore. Essentially, we all told Congress to put that in their PIPA and smoke it.
Now that most of us are breathing a collective sigh of relief, we undoubtedly have spent some since this bill hit the floor thinking about how the Internet has become a crutch for contemporary society. Increase of social networking has also increased our desire for anonymity and arguably decreased our interpersonal social networking. I’m not saying we should regress to the days of carrier pigeons – but remember when we didn’t text? Remember I invited you to my birthday over the phone instead of a Facebook event? Now thanks to the Internet, I no longer have to trek down to Tompkins Square Park to check out my books from the library I can just get them online and have them delivered to my Kindle in seconds! Cool, but sad. The Internet has proven how malleable we are by consistently changing the way we communicate with each other and by the toll it is has taken on many businesses, not just publishing.
For now, the Internet still remains as powerful as the public chooses to make it. We have avoided possibly catastrophic consequences by preventing SOPA and PIPA. Instead of wiping our brows and muttering thanks to the Congress gods before moving on to the next best thing, we should start remembering how we survived without the Internet in ye olde days. I know I still go to the library, still buy physical books, and still call you to invite you to my birthday party.
George may have been a few decades off, but maybe it’s a matter of time until Big Brother really is watching you.
Just a thought, albeit a creepy one.
Tags: Congress, ebooks, Internet, PIPA, SOPA