[APH] Spreading Awareness - The Return of SOPA

For once, a world conference had gone rather well. Despite some arguments here and there, no one stepped too far out of line and everyone managed to stay on topic. The nations even came to agreements on some things, though mainly by majority and never completely unanimously. When the clock showed that their time was nearly up, Germany rose to discuss one final issue.

“I believe we have time to cover one more topic. It’s not one we can do much discussing about at the moment, but rather one I would simply like to inform you of,” he said, straightening out a stack of papers as he did so. “All of you know about the bill called SOPA. What some of you may or may not know is that the bill has made a return, and is once again being discussed by America’s government.”

There were several gasps and exclamations of “what?!” from the various nations sitting at the meeting table. Someone even asked, “America, why didn’t you tell us about this?”

“Hey, I only heard about it right before the meeting, don’t blame me!” the young nation retorted.

“Don’t your dumbass people realize what this is going to do, idiot?!” South Italy sharply remarked. “It’s going to shut down the whole damn internet!”

“Woah, dude, I never said I was in support of this! And neither are most of my citizens, at least the cool ones who actually get how the internet works. People who support it, they have good intentions, but they don’t see that it’s going to do more harm than good.”

“Would someone mind explaining exactly why this is again?” Switzerland asked.

“SOPA,” Germany replied, “stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. The intention of the bill is to—as its name suggests—stop online piracy, especially from overseas sites that the US otherwise has no power to stop.”

“But the problem is,” America butt in, “that the bill is way too broad. Anything containing copyrighted material is subject to this, we can’t let it happen!” He slammed his fist on the table at the word ‘can’t’ for emphasis. “It’s not like everyone is stealing when they happen to use something someone else made, especially if they’re not making money off it or anything. Innocent people could go to jail for this shit!”

“You are TOTALLY right, my friend,” came a rather loud agreement from the other end of the table. Everyone in the room turned their attention to a now-standing Poland. “I read this bill when they tried to pass it before. Even though it targets torrent sites, it’s still going to like, basically kill the internet as we know it! Websites with any copyrighted stuff whatsoever is under threat.” All the nations stared blankly at him, waiting for him to continue. Now realizing his outburst had granted him the center of attention, he felt slightly uncomfortable, but he wasn’t about to back down now. “How many of you use deviantART?” he asked.  A couple nations raised their hands. “What about tumblr?” A few more. “YouTube?” At this point, the majority of them raised their hands. “Imagine an internet without them; because that’s what it’s going to look like if this thing goes through. Like America said, anything relating to copyrighted stuff is subject to penalty. This means no more fanfiction, or let’s plays, or anything, because it uses stuff belonging to other people. Fandoms will be totally non-existent.” He then looked directly at Sweden. “One of your people recently became the most subscribed channel on YouTube. But where will he be if this passes into law, and he can’t upload gameplay videos anymore?”

“Nowhere. He gets nothing,” Sweden mumbled.

“Exactly! But you know what? It probably won’t even matter, because policing the site as closely as this bill would require would just be too hard. It will likely just be shut down, along with many others that we all enjoy.”

The room fell silent for a moment, and Poland sat down again. After realizing he had finished his speech, and taking a moment to process all the information, everyone waited for someone to speak again. England became the first to do so.

“America, you said people could go to jail. But you don’t own the internet, it’s international. How does anyone expect to arrest someone outside of your country who happens to violate the ridiculous law, assuming it does pass?”

“You know, I’m not sure they’ve thought about it. As far as I know, they can’t. This thing is just so flawed and the language is so general that it needs some serious revision if my government ever realistically expects it to go through. And if I remember correctly, my boss doesn’t even support this; it’s everyone else running the place right now. But that shouldn’t keep us from trying to stop this from happening, anyway.” He stood up, just as Poland had done, and raised his voice to sound more confident and heroic. “This is an international problem, not just a national one, but with help from you dudes and dudettes, we can totally stop this!”

“And how do you propose we do this?” France asked.

“Spread the word to your citizens,” he encouraged. “Inform them of the bill. Also, I heard there’s another petition started. That was pretty successful last time, so I’m going to look into it as soon as I can and email the link out to all of you if I find it. I don’t think you have to be American to sign it. Other than that, we wait and see what happens.”

“We’re going to keep this from happening, right everyone?” someone asked enthusiastically.
For once, the nations came to a totally unanimous agreement.