Saturday, 17 December 2011

SOPA : Overbloated Censorship

SOPA aka 'Stop Online Piracy Act' is currently being discussed in the US Congress.  Stop this bill before it could cripple the Internet.




Why stop SOPA?

This bill is being rushed rather than being more carefully thought through.  By sharing a picture or a small clip of copyrighted material without permission, may end you in Jail.

The strategies

In the bill discusses vast amount of strategies to stop 'Online Priacy'.  Two of the nasty ones here:

DNS blocking tactics to repeated offenders, meaning you can stop countries from visiting a website for one.

Cut off funds to infringing websites and this means youtube.com, reddit.com, and most possibly facebook.com.

Internet Crippled
We also use various websites to:
  • Express ourselves, freedom of speech
  • Socialize with people, family and friends
  • organize clubs and get together
  • Share works and new media that we freely share
  • Even see what is happening around the world
By blocking and cutting funds to repeated offender sites, will mean less freedom of speech on the Internet, less sharing, less socializing, less debating, less innovation. 

Likely Targets
Such websites as wikipedia, youtube, and reddit, will most likely be some of the tragets.   They have cash, to fight most of the trouble yet the content will be more empty.

Small start up companies will be hurt too, as people share copyrighted material repeatly on new startup services, hit and probably struggle to stay alive as they have smaller budget.

This SOPA bill could cripple the Internet to the extreme.

What can you do?

There are a few ways to get action going.

Have a read of the comments about the bill

http://keepthewebopen.com/sopa

Sign the Petition  (Sign if you live outside)

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/

http://americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition/index.html


Share this Information

Write and share your views with your Internet followers, friends and family. Share the links to the videos, and online petitions.

Further Reading

http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

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