So I saw this on Tumblr like five minutes ago: If SOPA passes, the following sites could be blocked for US users. WHAT. THE. HELL.
Here's an article about it.
A Minnesota senator, OUR AMY KLOBUCHAR, supports it.
Really, guys? REALLY?
I don't know if it would actually block Facebook and Twitter from US users. I can't seem to find any articles to support that. However, I can find a website about American Censorship Day, claiming that Facebook will be gone from my life. Along with Twitter, Tumblr, Megavideo - no more Doctor Who and Torchwood! :( - and no YouTube. Not to mention that it seems this blog will cease to exist. Did I make the gifs I put on here? Did I take the photos (some of them, yes). But overall, nada. Call me a pirate. Me and like 90 some percent of my generation.
If this is real, then my creative outlets, innovation sites and business tools are kaput. My hopes of finding an outlet to practice writing, create a web presence and beef up a resume are gone. The chance of aspiring musicians, actors, entertainers, etc to express themselves and post their work will be made far more difficult to attain. So we watch TV shows for free and we sing covers of our favorite songs - guess what? I bet for every song we sing and TV show we watch, we BUY something that compensates. Yes, I watch Torchwood on Megavideo. But I'm planning on buying the seasons and I buy other merch. So we consumers are still buying stuff, if that's your worry. We're not going to fuck you over, music/movie/media industries. We LIKE you. We buy stuff, we do. We respect what you do. We just don't like spending loads of money for single songs, TV seasons, cable. And if you haven't noticed, American TV is ridiculous and Netflix has decided to suck. So... can you really blame us?
I don't like censorship. Lemme just make that clear. I don't usually get super in-your-face political, but this is something I really care about. I love how accessible the internet is - anyone can post anything. Yes, that causes problems - LOTS of problems. But seriously, I think this is the least of your worries. Could you maybe work on catching people who post child porn or something? That seems a little more vital to the integrity of our country than, you know, the guy at the U of such-and-such downloading a Katy Perry song for free. IMHO.
So if you happen to be as outraged as me and worried just enough that this totally legitimate, visit the American Censorship Day website and sign their petition. Let's just hope this is just a lot of ruckus over something that won't pass, that we've overblown into a monstrosity. But these days - who knows?
I can't tell if I'm going more anarchist or more libertarian. God help us all if I become either one.
So this is rather scary, but upon further investigation, it seems to me as if the internet's response to SOPA is a bit over the top. I read an official summary of the House version of the bill, and it seems like what it does is make it illegal for the major infrastructural institutions of the internet, like payment providers and advertisers, from dealing with sites/parts of sites that deal specifically in copyrighted material. The claims that it would shut down FB or twitter or blogger are don't make any sense, because that would be stupid on the part of Congress, and it would also be illegal, because they aren't violating any IP by existing. What it does do, is give the attorney general the purvey to follow through on cease and desist orders in cases where copyright law is clearly being violated. Don't get me wrong, I hate censorship too, but this doesn't seem like censorship to me. It seems more like a measure to actually uphold already existing laws that the internet is mad about because it will be harder to illegally access copyrighted material.
ReplyDeleteHere's the url for the Library of Congress' information and summary of the bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:H.R.3261:
Thanks for the summary of the Bill! Good to know that this is probably just an internet rumor gone out of whack.
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