By now, I am assuming you have heard of what SOPA and PIPA are and what is going on today. Today is a monumental day in internet history! Seriously.
I'll break it down for you so you can understand what's going on -
SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act - an anti-piracy bill that Congress is going to vote on.
PIPA is the Protect Internet Privacy Act.
These bills are said to "strengthen protections against copyright infringement & intellectual property theft." However, creative expression on the Internet would be suppressed if it goes too far.
If a particular movie is on a website in lets say, India, that website would be forced to take the movie down, Paypal couldn't accept payment from ANYTHING on their website, and the website would no longer pull up in search results. ALSO - if someone links up to said website on lets say, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, etc. - Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, etc. would legally have to pull that link down.
Someone would be all-powerful and basically own the internet.
You don't want your online creativity suppressed...do you?? I know I don't!! Freedom of speech would be no longer.
A timeline of what is and has been going on can be found here!
If you want to do something about it - take action here or here! (I did both!)
I see both sides. I think a balance needs to be reached. It's ridiculous the amount of piracy on the Internet right now. It's ridiculous how many BLOGS even don't source/link back to the images they find online. (I wrote about that the other day actually.) People are not using the Internet responsibly, but I don't think we need to be as extreme as you outlined above. In my opinion, we need Internet Police. They protect the Internet like the regular police protect each city, county, etc. It would help the actual police out, too, since the Internet Police could find contraband like child pornography, as well as pirated music, movies, images, etc. I know this whole Internet Police thing is a tough concept, but until people are ready to be responsible on their own, SOMETHING/SOMEONE has to govern them.
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Thanks for breaking it down! I hadn't heard about it except for a snidbit on the Today show... I'm off to read more about it now!
ReplyDeleteI signed those too! I hope it helps. I don't like to think about life without the internet...
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