So I’m sure everyone and their brother has heard at least the term SOPA and perhaps PIPA by now, but I thought I’d write a little something about it, too. Which is interestingly ironic, since writing something on a public blog, as I am, is exactly what I’d NOT be able to do if SOPA were to be passed into law.
Now I’ll be the first to say that I’m not very political. At all. In fact, I follow as little of politics as humanly possible without literally (Parks and Rec reference) hiding under a rock. So some of this may not be entirely, exactly correct or I may have used some terminology incorrectly, but that’s why I’m warning you ahead of time and telling you to, like always, do your research before getting up in arms about something. Don’t just take my word for it, especially since I just told you I hate politics. Why do I hate politics? That’s an entire blog in and of itself, so I won’t go there. Granted, every now and then I’ll get riled up enough to take some kind of action, even if it’s just telling other people about it. This time, it’s SOPA and PIPA.
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was initially targeted at online piracy (go figure) and putting it to a stop. Pretty much everyone has participated in some type of online piracy, so this alone would upset quite a number of people. To have to purchase your music again….so 90’s. But even besides that slight irritation, that part of the bill is legitimate in my opinion. But, that’s not the whole story. Congressmen and women are (business as usual) trying to sneak other separate issues that may not get passed by themselves into these bills so the hole thing gets approved. With SOPA engaged, the government would be able to completely shut down sites of their choosing if they feel the site has voiced something the government doesn’t like. Sound familiar? That’s basically China’s view of the Internet – extremely censored. To show you what that’s like, Wikipedia, Reddit, and many more thousands of sites have gone dark today. Now SOPA has been shelved, as ZDNet explains, which is a good win for the battle, but the war isn’t over. They haven’t killed the bill completely, so it’s very possible, and likely, that it will come back with some adjustments or even a different name. So stay alert and do your research if you want to continue living in a country with free speech.
“Now, Ian,” you might say, “you’ve talked about SOPA quite a bit, but what about PIPA?” Well, the video below explains PIPA better than I would’ve, so I’ll let it do the talking for me here.
You can find tons more information on SOPA and PIPA all over the Web and once you do your research, please, please, please, write your Congressman/woman and tell them what you think! Even easier – head to google.com/takeaction for 5 seconds to sign the petition that Google is hosting. There’s already hundreds of thousands of signatures, but that’s only a drop in the ocean. The government already has too much power and look what good that’s done for America so far….not much. And they only want more.
