Clay Shirky explains why SOPA/PIPA is bad [TED Video]

Following the 18 January blackout protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act), TED has released a video of renowned New York University (NYU) professor Clay Shirky explaining why the bill passing before congress is bad.

The talk, called “Defend Our Freedom To Share (Or Why SOPA is a Bad Idea)”, took place at TED’s New York offices. The video wasn’t part of the company’s traditional conference video lecture series about “ideas worth spreading”.

The 14 minute video begins with a story about a bakery that printed children’s drawings on birthday cakes. This became a problem because printing a child’s drawing of Mickey Mouse, for instance, counts as copyright infringement. “It turns out to be illegal to print a child’s drawing of Mickey Mouse onto a plate of sugar,” Shirky says.

Shirky talks about the evolution of online content law from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 leading up to SOPA and its sister bill, PIPA.

Shirky also calls the online community to action asking them to preserve their rights to share.

“Because the biggest producers of content on the internet are not Google and Yahoo — they’re us — we’re the ones getting policed,” he explains. “The real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one another.”