Wow, it’s been a long time since I last posted anything (and a lot of my recent hits have been people looking for an explanation for that whole “your mom is so ugly even Fluorine wouldn’t bond with her” joke…maybe I’ll have to post one to sate their curiosity…). However, another issue has come to light (well, has been in the light for a while, but is still relevant, and something kinda important…) that has managed to get me off my lazy ass and write something. I’m going to research all of this as thoroughly as possible, but the long and short of it is this: there are bills before both Congress and the Senate (the SOPA and the PIPA, respectively) which would effectively grant them the power to restrict access to websites they deem harmful to our economy. Why is this a bad thing? Well…
For starters, I’d recommend just doing a quick Google search for internet censorship. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Now, you’ll notice that there are a lot of articles calling for us to stand up and scream at our representatives; something along the lines of, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Others calmly point out that these bills are very generally worded at best, giving those lovely people in charge of running our country a rather impressive amount of gray area to work in. Still others will point out that 9 of the major internet companies are fighting these bills tooth and nail; one article I read on the subject stated that “Yahoo has reportedly quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its enthusiastic support for SOPA.” Still others yell at all of the huge entertainment corporations (who are, naturally, huge fans of the bills), pointing out that they already have the power to have videos removed from sites (try finding official music videos or portions of television shows on YouTube these days), and that this new bill would be completely overkill. The best of these articles combine elements of all of this. One thing that you will find it difficult to find? Any articles supporting either of these bills. Granted, you ran a search on the Internet, where the general community would disagree with these bills (and if you used Google like I suggested, they are one of the 9 tech giants firmly against the bill), but even so, it’s usually much easier to find both sides of an argument on the Internet. Hell, one of my favorite parts about it is the fact that both liberal and conservative websites are totally bashing the bills.
Now, piracy is definitely a problem, and make no mistake. While it is true that a lot of people that download music illegally wouldn’t have bought the music anyway, and that those that download the most music also tend to be those that buy the most, it doesn’t change the fact that the music industry has lost half of its sales since music downloading became an object. Yes, really (yes, the stats are from two years ago, but it’s not exactly getting any better). The PC gaming industry was hit just about as hard. The problem with this isn’t so much that those that are already fat off of their success aren’t getting any more money (I have absolutely no problem with that); the problem is that this sort of thing makes it much harder for new artists to come out, as record labels are now a lot less likely to invest in a young, risky new band. Thus does the quality of our music decline. And the same can be said for the movie studios (are you as annoyed as I am about how much of the stuff they release is just total garbage these days?).
With all of that said, these bills are definitely not the way to go. These bills will effectively allow the corporations to force internet providers to block access to websites that host anything they deem copyright infringement. One article I read claimed that that could lead to social networking sites like Facebook getting blacklisted, as, if anyone posted a link to something copyrighted, the whole website could be held accountable, leaving FB little choice but to either censor its users or get blacklisted. And all of that doesn’t even get into the stuff I read about messing with the foundation of the Internet and causing instability and further security risks.
I’d rather not go into the technical details or sort through the political speak around these, seeing as people generally far more qualified than myself have already done so. The big thing here is to spread the word, and get those that are supposed to represent our interests to understand that we will not support this bill. There is a petition being hosted by moveon.org, the names on which will purportedly be read before Congress this week (sounds like an exciting session). I encourage you to “sign” it, as well, at least if you agree with me. You can also go the old school ways of calling or sending letters to your reps, or go new wave and use email. If you don’t agree with me, well, thanks for reading anyway.
Cheers!
Further info: I recommend this article. It was rather helpful to me and breaks things down nicely. Also, watch this video.
Finally, Anonymous is naturally involved in this. If you are interested, their video is here. And another here. And another here. They, and probably several others pretending to be them, have even more videos, if you look around.
Long story short: fight these bills. They are ill-made, and will only cause problems.
