On Line Ticos Join Stop-SOPA Force

It is highly unusual for Costa Ricans to join forces with opposition to a bill under consideration in the U.S. Congress, but the Internet outcry against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was deafening.

It's not that Ticos have any love for those who steal the creative efforts of others but they -- as well as a great group of North Americans -- view with alarm a bill many believe is so poorly written that it endangers free speech.

As early as Jan. 17, TicoBlogger, a Spanish-language Web site based in this country, announced its opposition to the bill, joining Wikipedia (which turned off its English-language Web pages for a day last week in protest.)

"Because we are a united community of people who think differently," read the Ticoblogger statement, "we firmly believe in the right that each one of our members has to freely express himself or herself, state that from this day forward we are joining Wikipedia to form a symbolic fight against SOPA and PIPA." (PIPA is a similar piece of legislation.)

Certainly, the legislation has its supporters in the United States, especially from the music industry and such movie producing companies as Time Warner. Each loses millions of dollars yearly in pirated work.

But critics of the law say that the bill is poorly written in broad and vague terms that endangers the First Amendment of the Constitution in the U.S. And Costa Ricans say the law would affect them and other users around the world.

The blog Conejitas Suicidas (Suicidal Rabbits) posted their fear this way (in Spanish): "(Even) if the law will truly only govern (services) in U.S. territory...almost all of the the services and sites we use daily will be effected: YouTube, Wikipedia, Google or Twitter, to name a few.

"On the other hand," continues the blog, "the United States houses basic Web services such as control over generic domains (.com. .net. .org) that, although belonging to Web sites outside its territory ... can be disabled from the United States, without considering the judicial system of the affected country ..."

But Ticos weighed in not only on SOPA but the FBI closing of the Web site MegaUpLoad, a source of pirated music. That closing and the resulting backlash from the hacker group known as Anonymous, which closed the FBI Web site, was also not lost on Costa Rican computer users.

Update: The entire Web page of the Costa Rican Chamber of Information and Communication Technology (Camtic) on Jan. 25 was devoted to information that SOPA and PIPA (Protect Intelllectual Property Act) could result in the closing down of any .com in this country without prior warning.