There are two bills in the US congress that threaten the very core of the internet – FREEDOM!
First we have the very publicized “SOPA” which is a very broad reaching bill that will enable copyright holders like the movie studios to censure websites in the states if they in any way host copyrighted material, talk about how to illegally obtain copyrighted material or even link to anything that has copyrighted material. That bill is being redrafted since there was so much opposition to it but as Jimmy Wales said in his tweet – “it’s not off the table”. And then we have PIPA which isn’t that bad but would still make it possible to force sites like NataliePortman.com to go overseas and censure it for the people in the US.
I support them in spirit of what they are trying to do. I mean if I spent a fortune producing a movie only to see it on a torrentsite for download day after release I’d be pretty pissed off to. But they are still so broad and cover so many things that they would change how the internet works since people that run websites would need to go through them almost non-stop to make sure there are no copyright infringements anywhere. How much would YouTube have to work to keep it clean? And Facebook? And google search (cause let’s face it, google is a great searchtool to find torrents.. if you’re into that).
Everytime a dictatorship like oh I don’t know … say China blocks the internet for their citizens the west are quick to condemn it, saying “what gives them the right to control what their citizens can see on the internet”. Well this will give the US government that power. And it won’t be political but $$$.
So on wednesday some sites like Reddit and Wikipedia will be offline. As will NataliePortman.com. There isn’t that much that we, as non US citizens can do, but this we can do!!
stoff
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