Megaupload and SOPA in Asia

There's a saying that when elephants dance, the ants get trampled. In the wake of events this January, the Internet has been a hot bed of activity with US legislation pushing for an anti-online piracy bill with SOPA (and its Senate counterpart PIPA). This drew the anger of the Web community worldwide because of how the possible law would affect the World Wide Web and shape the face of the Internet of the future.

Fortunately, through the concerted efforts of a number of big Internet sites such Wikipedia, Facebook and Google and coupled with the rage of the Internet community, the US lawmakers backed down. Unfortunately, a few days later there was the recent arrest of Megaupload founder Kim Schmitz and the shutdown of the massive Megaupload file-sharing site. Ironically, Kim's arrest seemed to be a chilling counterpoint to the Internet's victory over the shelved SOPA/PIPA bills, as if the US government was saying, "We may not have SOPA but we can still take you out."

It's not a coincidence that Megaupload was the first to be targeted by the US government. Kim (aka Kim Dotcom) had a flamboyant lifestyle and was not one to hide his massive wealth. However, because of Kim's arrest, other file-sharing sitesare now wary of the coming days such that they've enacted policies to protect themselves. Will that stop the US government? No one is sure. After all, Megaupload had already taken down its premium service--one of the reasons cited for its shut-down--a few months before the site's subsequent closure.

In the Philippines, there were some groups in the movie and music industries (akin to those in the US lobbying for the bills) that wanted local legislation similar to SOPA and PIPA. However, nothing came out of this. I guess after seeing the reaction of the world, none of them wanted to risk the ire of the local Internet community.

Still, I thought the damage had been done in the wake of the two recent events. Trying to figure out the Internet in relation to problems like online piracy will probably take forever to solve and hammer-headed proposals like SOPA and PIPA will always crop up. In the meantime, people who uploaded their files in Megaupload legitimately--their family pictures of their summer vacation, large work files that can't be sent via email, college theses sent to professors--all that data is now being threatened with deletion and it remains to be seen if the users can retrieve them.

It's this that sticks to my craw. Yes, I know how much data is temporary in today's Digital Age. But there's something so galling about the cavalier treatment of other people's property (even if it's just information) that turns it into collateral damage between an immovable object and an irresistible force.