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SOPA threatening to derail Irish cloud vision

31st January 2012

While SOPA has created plenty of exposure and led to much positive action in the US of late, Ireland still awaits a governmental ruling that could yet have a detrimental effect on the country’s bid to become a centre of cloud computing excellence (and a whole lot more). One of our guest bloggers, Ian Bergin, has been at the centre of the ‘Stop SOPA Ireland’ campaign, and explains why he thinks the potential ruling could prove so disastrous for his country's future online economy.

The dirty business of cleaning the cloud with SOPA
Ian Bergin, Cloud Evangalist

SOPA has become the pariah term for the Internet in recent weeks. In the US, mass lobbying from internet users made it more undesirable than a fart in a spacesuit. And that is saying something.

However, the day after the January 18th protests, MegaUpload was taken down by the FBI, citing fraud, money laundering and racketeering; and its founders were arrested in New Zealand, pending extradition to the US to face those charges.

Over a week later, the FBI is seeking to confiscate all MegaUpload data that was held on US-based servers, whether legitimate or not, and the owners of legitimate data have little to no indication if or even when they will have their property returned to them.

In Ireland, a statutory instrument is being sought for implementation by the music industry under threat of legal action against the state, following the unsuccessful suit by EMI Ireland against Internet Service Provider, UPC, where the judgement laid down that instructions to block sites, and/or force disconnections of offending users could not be achieved due to a gap in legislation.

That 'gap' in legislation was due to be plugged last week, were it not for a steam-train of lobbying by Irish Internet users in the 'Stop SOPA Ireland' campaign, which raised the alarm to industry and internet users alike. It also prompted the Irish Internet Service Providers Association to issue a strongly worded letter against the proposed statutory instrument.

The issue with the secondary legislation due to be passed was the vagueness of how it could/would be used, leaving interpretation wide open to the judiciary, no clear indication of how costs of such challenges would be met (or by who), along with even going so far as having such vagueness to possibly effect the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others who operate in Ireland, as no clear-cut guarantees could be given to them not becoming threatened by it.

All of this led to over 77,000 signatures on a petition against the legislation in its current form, hundreds of thousands of emails to politicians, calls, on-street demonstrations and for the first time, secondary legislation becoming the subject of an open debate in parliament chambers.

The intense increase with which such 'seizure' legislation is being sought worldwide completely undermines the viability of Cloud Computing, as the legislation being sought is often extremely one-sided, does not seek to ensure that access to legitimate information is protected, while also allowing the wheels of law to engage against infringing data.

Those seeking the legislation (the movie, music and entertainment industries) claim it is needed to protect their business, while caring nothing for the businesses that will be caught in the crossfire, many of whom will be small-to-medium enterprises, which will not have resources to extricate themselves from the legal salvos on both sides, while their business suffers.

What is worse is the fact that Governments who are trying to stem the bleed of small business failures are doing nothing to recognise this, or recognise the impact on innocent parties. Even the organisations who represent small business seem to turn a blind eye to this, and don't seem to care how they could in fact one morning, as a result of some action being taken, wake up to find a membership out of business simply because they failed to be informed, step in to seek consultation, and drive for that.

There is a very real threat out there to the Internet and the drive of cloud computing technology. It is not piracy. It is not copyright infringement. It is over-zealous politicians eager to not offend rights-holders who seek legislation that is potentially incredibly damaging to the growth of our now globalised information and knowledge society.

No-one is disputing that copyright infringement is wrong. No-one is disputing that piracy does hurt businesses in some way. However, the ideology of American-esque 'shock-and-awe' to solve this problem is unhelpful, self-destructive and damaging; and the cloud will suffer, as will the industries around it, those who depend on it to try keep businesses afloat so they can move forward.

The destruction of the cloud at the hands of ill-thought, ill-considered, under-debated and consulted anti-piracy measures that are enacted with iron fists will cost more jobs globally than the issue of piracy itself.

Today in Ireland, as we debate the issue of how such legislation needs to be approached, thought and consulted, a country seen as leaders in the cloud will find its fate determined by a Minister of State under pressure to save face, save costs from a legal action and keep Ireland out of the spotlight. Unfortunately, his actions to date have ensured there is a big and bright one shining directly on Irish Government buildings today, and the outcome from the chamber debate.

Ian Bergin is a veteran of the cloud and managed services industries in Ireland, specialising in consulting in cloud startups and cloud strategies for Government, multi-national corporations & Irish technology start-ups. Contact him on Twitter via @TheIanFella

Tags: public sector cloud | social cloud