If you depend on the Internet for your career or to share information you’ve probably heard about SOPA and PIPA. You can do an online search and learn more about these two proposed laws. In a nutshell…
… these proposed laws would effectively give the government an Internet kill switch according to most legal scholars. The backers of SOPA are huge entertainment companies such as Disney, AOL, CBS, MSN, and many others.
These companies complain that there is too much piracy going on and people are stealing their copyrighted content. But, on the following video (a link to YouTube is provided below) there seems to be a body of evidence which shows that the same companies that are pushing for SOPA protection, are the same companies that distributed the software needed to download online content, and even encouraged innocent consumers to download their own material in the first place…!
Most reasonable people agree that these proposed laws stink because it sounds like a set up to scam innocent consumers by suing them and threatening to put them in jail for felonies. In some circles one would say this is like a form of entrapment. The corporations gave away the software needed to download the content, then taught and encouraged millions of innocent consumers worldwide to download their copyrighted content. And now they want to create a law that enables them to hunt down everyone and get ‘em.
The attack on free speech is a strong enough case to stop the passage of SOPA and PIPA.
Most arguments against these proposed laws focus on the fact how your freedom of speech and the freedom of speech found on the Internet would be controlled by big business and big government together.
SOPA and PIPA are bad because they would censor your free-speech, and give the government and large companies the ability to shut down the Internet as we now know it. It would affect your online business, how you market online, your website, and how you share information online.
Being “affected” is too soft a word. Here’s one scenario given by experts: You play copyrighted music at your wedding, then play the wedding video on YouTube… that could be enough to land you in legal trouble and face a felony as well as a multi-million dollar fine!
By the way, SOPA is modeled after China’s Internet censorship procedures.
What’s worse, however, is fact that the same corporations who support SOPA and want to use it to sue you and others for copyright infringement, are the same companies that gave you the software needed to download their content, taught you how to download their content, and then encouraged you and millions of others to download their copyrighted content.
Many sensible people would say this is con that allows a few politically connected corporations to use the “bully club” of the law to enrich themselves at the expense of innocent consumers.
Watch the video and decide for yourself.
The video is produced for a mass audience, however the evidence brought up is sharp and to the point. It’s worth watching the whole video and sharing it with others, and especially to your elected officials who will be voting on these kinds of laws.
You should review the accompanying website and see the hundreds of pages of text, screen shots of the offending web pages, and links:
http://onecandleinthedark.blogspot.com/2011/05/cnet-fueled-piracy-phenomenon-before.html
Note: even if you read this and don’t live in the U.S. you should share it with your own elected officials because the U.S. has tried to extradite individuals who have downloaded, or simply linked, to copyrighted material, even if this was not illegal in their home country.
What’s your opinion of SOPA and Internet censorship? Leave a comment below.
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