Copyright bill is modern day witch hunt

Republicans and Democrats unite to support bipartisan legislation that would outlaw the theft of intellectual property on the Internet.

The new bill would allow large Hollywood studios and television networks to ask banks, domain name registrars and Internet Service Providers to deny doing business with websites that infringe on copyright law.

While piracy costs the American economy billions of dollars annually, this new law goes too far.

In theory, TV networks and Hollywood studios could demand that Youtube's domain registration company shut the entire website down forever.

This is cyber-bullying at its worst.

Of course, copyright infringement is wrong. Of course, people should pay $30 to see a movie and then buy it on Blu-ray. Any idiot knows this. But legislation that enables influential (wealthy) copyright owners to police the Internet with such brutality is also wrong.

Remember Hollywood blacklisting? I don't because I was born in 1990, but I've heard enough to know it did more harm than good. America's fear of communism was so great that our government went to extreme measures to ensure capitalism was kept safe. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), charged with finding and dealing with communists in the United States, summoned several entertainment professionals to testify. The Hollywood 10, as they came to be known, refused to testify, igniting the American government. This led to an official statement from the film industry, which came to be known as the Waldorf Statement. The signatories indicating a desire to eliminate subversives from the entertainment industry announced the firing of the Hollywood 10.

To be listed on the Hollywood Blacklist was to see the potential end of one's career, often on the basis of questionable and unverifiable information. Those blacklisted were pariahs.

If large studios have the ability to shut down any future website with the potential of copyright infringement, partisan control and policing of the Internet becomes inevitable. Who knows? Maybe I'm heading down some slippery slope here, but I do understand one thing – the theft of intellectual property is so commonplace it cannot be policed effectively.

People steal music, television, movies and games every second. What's to stop them from doing so after this new bill is passed?

Nothing? Exactly. The Internet is far too vast.

For this reason alone, any attempt to eliminate piracy is futile.

Sure, the American economy suffers when people hijack material, but how many dollars will be wasted pursuing these untraceable thieves? How many jobs will be lost when entire websites are shut down? How many innocent people will endure agonizing months, or even years, of overdrawn court battles?

Perhaps most importantly, however: if this bill is passed, how long do we have until the wealthy buy the rest of our rights?

Bradbury is a junior plant sciences major of Hot Springs.