In my view, we want more freedom, not less. The internet is valuable because of how free it is. We've already seen that begin to erode through the abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and this bill is an order of magnitude worse. Instead of stopping piracy, this bill will create enormous burdens for companies and create ridiculous penalties for individuals who may or may not even be purposefully infringing.
This bill is the fever dream of movie studios, record labels, TV companies, and any one else whose formerly reliable gravy train is coming to a halt. These companies, instead of adapting to advances in technology and access, desperately cling to the old ways of doing business. They're horrified at the fact that an artist doesn't need a label for people to hear their music, film makers can put their films up on YouTube and Vimeo, that people can watch TV shows without a cable box. The middle men are starting to realize that progress is about to leave them out in the cold.
Part of what makes this bill so bad is that it isn't even your run of the mill corporatism. In that case, the taxpayers may be on the hook for a subsidy, or a bailout, or the industry might be getting some really cherry tax cuts or loosening of regulations. In this case, the U.S. Government is actively enabling the entertainment industry to harass ISPs, internet technology companies, and private individuals over any perceived infringement, and using the Department of Justice to do it. Your tax dollars would be paying for DOJ to block websites and force YouTube to do such an absurd amount of content monitoring as to make it impossible to run the website.
My primary opponent, Ben Ray Lujan, is a co-sponsor of this bill. This is a big deal to me, I've been online since I was ten years old. I've watched the internet develop into this amazing infrastructure for the free exchange of ideas, communication, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit. You can say good bye to all of that if this bloated whales carcass of a bill gets signed into law.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/16/1037000/-The-Stop-Online-Piracy-Act:-Corporatism-at-Its-WorstAll About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet
SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is another one of those bills that sounds like it's going to do something mildly positive but, in reality, has serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. It puts power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language vague enough to encompass sites you use every day, like Twitter and Facebook, making SOPA a serious problem. Here's how it works and what you can do about it.
How Does SOPA Work, and Why Should I Care?
The idea behind SOPA sounds reasonable. It came about in order to try to snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited about the many people downloading their product without their permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in support of piracy, against it, or just don't care. SOPA makes it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simple capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement.
This means that if Lifehacker happened to have an article or two that could be interpreted as piracy-friendly, our domain could be blocked so it's unaccessible by visiting lifehacker.com. What the bill can't do is block numeric IP addresses, so you could still access Lifehacker, or any other site that could be censored, if you knew that address. This is important because it means this bill can't do much to stop downloaders of pirated content. If a domain name is blocked, everything will still work via the numeric IP address. Basically, the bill will be no good at stopping piracy—what it was apparently designed to do—but excellent at censoring any web site capable of providing its users with the means of promoting pirated content or allowing the process. This includes sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and many more. If it's possible to post pirated content on the site, or information that could further online piracy, a claim can be brought against it. This can be something as minor as you posting a copyrighted image to your Facebook page, or piracy-friendly information in the comments of a post such as this one. The vague, sweeping language in this bill is what makes it so troubling.
In the event of SOPA-based censorship, any site can submit an appeal so long as they do so within five days. This isn't a lot of time to handle a legal matter, and if you've ever dealt with a copyright infringement takedown notice you know how ineffective an appeal can be. When a threat of legal action is posed, a company is generally going to prefer to err on the side of caution and remove infringing content indefinitely. It's far cheaper to run the risk of removing perfectly legal content than to battle the issue in court. If your web host censors your site because of a SOPA-based claim, you can expect the same sorts of problems.
http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internetTech giants say SOPA piracy bill is 'draconian'
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A proposed new bill intended to combat online piracy has sparked a giant backlash from big tech companies, including Google and Facebook, who say the proposals are far too strict and rife with unintended consequences.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced in the House of Representatives in late October, aims to crack down on copyright and trademark issues. Its targets include "rogue" foreign sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay.
SOPA -- and a similar bill called the Protect IP Act that is making its way through the Senate -- effectively promotes censorship.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/16/technology/sopa/?source=cnn_bin
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