As a teacher, I got really excited when Apple released iBooks Author on Thursday, January 19^th. All of a sudden I had an easy-to-use tool with a familiar interface that I could use to publish cutting-edge e-books to my students. “Wow!” I thought, “This’ll be great! I can package up the whole class – syllabus, lectures, and even readings—into one easily downloadable file!”

Then I remembered SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act now in front of the US Congress) and my excitement quickly cooled. I might be dedicated, but did I want to risk hefty fines, site shutdowns, or even jail just so I could use a cool new technology to be a better teacher and improve my students’ education? 

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard about SOPA by now through the news or when you ran smack up against Wikipedia’s recent “black out” protest.  While explaining its provisions in depth would require far more space than I have here (there’s a good synopsis on Wikipedia), the gist of the hotly-contested bill is that it would give new powers to the US Department of Justice to effectively shut down sites accused of copyright infringement by blocking access to them on the Internet. While the bill (heavily backed by the entertainment industry) was ostensibly designed to take down foreign sites, currently outside the reach of US law, by preventing US-based companies from doing business with them, the effect would be that any site accused of containing copyrighted material could be knocked off the Internet.

If you think this sounds alarmist, Thursday, January 19^th’s government shutdown ofMegaupload provides a crystal-clear preview of the far-reaching and damaging consequences of what could happen if SOPA becomes law…and why educators (and everyone else who uploads material to the Internet for any reason) should be alarmed.

Megaupload is one of the world’s most popular file sharing sites, a place where people could get an online “locker” in order to share files with others. Yes, the site was used by “pirates” to share copyrighted materials such as music and films, but it was also used by many, many others to share business documents, design comps, photo albums, school projects, and presentations too big to email. For those of us who produce digital content, it’s a hugely useful, popular, and necessary service…in fact, I’d bet that you may have used the site itself, or at least one of its competitors such as YouSendIt.com or Dropbox.com.

Now all the content uploaded to the site to be shared is gone, seized by the US Government as part of an indictment claiming that Megaupload was responsible for the loss of $500 million in revenue for copyright holders. Poof! If your work was on Megaupload, kiss it goodbye. 

This seizure was accomplished without SOPA because even though Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, it also leased space on servers in the US putting it under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Justice. If SOPA goes into effect, shut-downs like this one become even easier. The result would be that any site unable to guarantee that it doesn’t contain copyrighted material would have to go dark or risk becoming a target of the law.

“So what?” you may be saying, “isn’t it good to stop online piracy? I’m not a pirate and I don’t visit ‘file sharing’ sites. This won’t affect me!”

Wrong. 

The fact is that there are probably very few corners of the Internet that don’t blur the distinction between free speech and potentially copyright-infringing material…at least based on the standard that the entertainment industry has been pushing. They’d love to claim anything published on the web as commercial speech. Snapped a family photo in front of a famous (and trademarked) logo (such as at Disney)? Copyright violation! Uploaded a slideshow of your kid’s birthday party using a popular song as the soundtrack? Copyright infringement! Shared a conference presentation containing some images or charts you got from the Internet without first clearing their use with the copyright holder? You’re a pirate! Posted a film clip from YouTube to your online class? You’re an evil thief destroying the entertainment industry!

While there are many, many problems with what’s going on in the battle over copyright online, probably the biggest one—and the one that, as an educator, made me hesitate to use iBook Author—is the erosion of the concept of “fair use.” While traditionally “fair use” allowed people to share portions of copyrighted content if they weren’t trying to make money from it (see the US Copyright Office’s definition here, the entertainment industry has worked consistently to erode these rights, even going so far as to protest “fair use” because it encourages too much litigation…when they’re the ones doing the litigating! While it once was OK to share portions of copyrighted content if you weren’t trying to make money off of it (especially in the case of educational usage), today posting a video to YouTube that contains a popular song playing in the background or posting a class presentation to Slideshare.com that includes images snagged off the Web could result in hefty fines or even jail time. With SOPA in place, it could even get your website shut down…and leave you with no practical legal recourse to stop it (unless you’ve got millions of dollars to fight the RIAA in court). Even sites like iTunesU or the iBook Store could get shut down if they contain works that include even a smidgen of copyrighted material.

iBooks Author and other new media creation technologies represent an absolutely amazing opportunity to democratize the world of content creation and publishing in a way the world hasn’t seen since the invention of the printing press. However, actually using these tools in a practical way to create and publish content requires the use of the Internet as a distribution medium. With a free and open Internet, content creators now have an unprecedented opportunity to share their art, thoughts, and ideas with a global audience. With an Internet crippled by SOPA the door to small content creators is effectively shut because they won’t have anywhere to distribute their creations. Innovative services such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Dropbox, and, yes, iTunesU would have to shut down or severely limit the ability of people to post content because the burden of checking uploads (or risk shutdown) would be so burdensome that they couldn’t operate. The Internet as we know it would cease to exist and we’d be left with nothing but a cable TV-like network where only the Big Guys can afford to publish content…with the rest of us paying for every view.

Fortunately, SOPA (and PIPA) have been temporarily derailed in Congress, but let’s keep an eye on it because it’s not dead yet.

Continue to ask yourself, “Is SOPA the Internet that you want?