Blocking sites for secular and political reasons is nothing new and not something unheard of. We have been getting such news from Middle East countries since long back. Even Dubai and UAE had once blocked social communities like Orkut and Facebook. But to hear something of that sort from West the real originator of the network is something surprising.
With the latest discussion of COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) to be studied seriously it seems if the act gets approval the internet would become antiquated. COICA would challenge the websites indulged in any sort of infringing activity, viz. copyright infringement, cracked copy of softwares, free distribution of licensed materials, objectionable materials, etc. The authorities primarily would list such websites in blacklists and would ask the global communities like google, paypal, etc to block the domain from first list. However with COICA, they even reserve the rights to clean of the net with such sites.
So what happens with our YouTube?
YouTube being widely used website to share free contents as present has many and uncountable objectionable contents adhering to fall in the bait of COICA. So to prevent such giants from the threat there might be an underline to the act that, the objectionable content should be removed on notice or complain within stipulated time limit.
So the Big Question
The big question is, in this ever fastening world of internet where infinite chunks of data transfer occurs every nanosecond, does the law with such amendment would yield the desired result. The books which has been banned or video which has been rated “Remove”, or the software which is “Copyrighted” all would have resulted into thousands to millions to trillions copies. The irony to the matter that restricted things occurs faster and in myriads.
Effects on Indian Pirated Market
If this act is taken very seriously it might affect India’s piracy market and might ease the tensions of the government and ever worrying bollywood industry. It might translate into restricted resources for software/movies/games download for young budding Engineers and gamers of India. At the same time the vice versa effect can be the increased use of Compact Discs (CDs) and Digital Discs (DVDs) to share the copyrighted material. The price of pirated CDs might increase and new softwares, movies, games from west could take some time to reach India (esp. Indian Piracy Market).
My Opinion
However if you ask me, personally I oppose this act, not for pirated softwares or movies, but for the common good of the word Internet which is derived from International Network. Let information flow without restriction. If the knowledge is controlled by few then there are possibilities that we might perceive what they want us to know and not what we should know! For me its about my right to decide what should I read, see, use. If they think a book should be banned and not published then why not let me decide that!!
Your Views are solicited!!
