UPDATE: Here is a great video for you lazy peeps... please watch!
Tomorrow, Wikipedia will black out it's site to show their opposition to SOPA. That begs the question, what is SOPA... I've already talked about this some via status updates and article links, but I feel this deserves a post of its own.
SOPA is... an infringement on an open internet. The law would allow the government to "blacklist" any web address they saw fit, meaning no one in the USA could access this site. By "blacklist", I mean literally making internet providers block the site to any US users. This is going to make your Cox internet more expensive...It's meant to stop pirating and other illegal things. But what it is really doing is putting us all at risk. Now... to explain how this effects us... Any site that has uploaded material, the big examples being youtube, twitter, and facebook, will now be responsible for all content uploaded to their site. If one link infringes on a copyright, the whole site could be blocked. This really limited user driven sites. For all you singers out there, everytime you upload a video of you singing a popular song, you are infringing on a copyright. You'll be charged $1 per view, even if you don't make anything off the video. Once getting to 2,500 views, you've now committed a felony.
It's a direct attack at the little guy. It has the potential to be used for political reasons and shut down the sites of those who don't agree with the government opinion. None of the big publishers would be at risk. It's the little guy who would face the threat. By enforcing certain copyrights, say the Wall Street Journal reports the story first. They could then claim they "own" the property of that story. If enforced the n'th degree, they could prosecute anyone who reported on that story via their blog or twitter account, because it wasn't an "official" source. Is this the intent of the law? No, but this something that could happen. It would once again put all the power in the hands of those who have money. Once again, silencing the little guys...
Luckily, with Wikipedia, Google, and others who aren't part of the "traditional" media and believe in an open internet, this thing has finally picked up steam. Hopefully the people in Washington get the hint... we don't want your censorship! And for those who wish, here is a the bill in it's full form.
To end, last night during the presidential debate, I heard one of the candidates(can't recall who) make the comment that they agreed with the NDAA law that was going through Congress... I posted about this at the end of November. The candidate agreed that it could be abused, they promised to not abuse the power and felt confident that President Obama wouldn't abuse the power either. Is this seriously our defense??? Why bring a law into writing that is very easily abused and think your promise to not abuse it will be enough? This is a scary, scary mentality that leads to things like SOPA and NDAA coming into law and haunting us for years to come. Please, do not be complacent. This is our future...
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