SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) are serious problems that we are facing right now. Thanks to Wikipedia and other websites, a lot of awareness has been spread so people realize what they are up against. Wikipedia along with other sites blacked out to race awareness about SOPA. Recently many videos have been uploaded to YouTube informing the viewers about SOPA and its consequences. For those who believe in 2012, then SOPA may very well be what the Mayans predicted. SOPA was a bill suggest by Lamar S. Smith. The bill was meant to eliminate piracy on the internet. However SOPA has a lot of bad side-effects. It will have disastrous consequences on the world. SOPA is bad for numerous reasons. For one thing, freedom of online speech would be reduced to practically nothing. Secondly the amount of power it would give the American government would just be plain terrifying. Also practically anything on the Internet that we consider "fun" or "useful", will disappear. Not only that the entire law is pointless.
One of the things disastrous consequences of SOPA would be that practically any site which we deem either fun or useful will disappear. This includes Picasa, Blogger, Twitter, New-Grounds, 9gag, Wikipedia, Facebook, You-tube, and many, many more. Imagine your life without those sites. You may not use all of the ones I just mentioned, but if Wikipedia, Facebook, and You-tube were to disappear, that would have a big impact of the world. Certain sites are already being removed. This is further proof that SOPA is serious business. "Mega-Upload" was branded as a "rogue site" by the music industry. As a result the site was rendered unavailable due to a DNS take-down. A group of artists including P.Diddy had made a song to support Mega-Upload and to raise awareness about what was happening. The Universal Media Group (UMG) forced You-tube to take it down, as they said it violated their copyright. The scary thing about this incident brings me to my next point which is control.
SOPA would give the American government AND mega-corporations a large amount of control of the Internet. The UMG for example didn't even need a legitimate reason for taking down P.Diddy's video.Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the UMG had made a deal with You-tube allowing them to take down videos they did NOT have the right to. Therefore that mega-corporation can censor videos from the second largest search engine in the world. Not only that but also the largest video distribution platform that shares videos with people opinions on absolutely anything you can possibly imagine, internationally. So not only are they annoying the American public, the entire world is affected. This is what is going on right now. It is only a taste of what is to come if SOPA is passed. SOPA would effectively destroy You-tube and any similar site like for example, New-Grounds. What SOPA does is it gives the government the power to eliminate a site that has the potential of supporting pirated content via DNS blocking. It isn't even about eliminating just the pirated content. SOPA will not only destroy the copyright content, it will destroy the entire website supporting it. It will also destroy any website that even had the means to support pirated content. This means that any site which allows the user to upload content, or allows the user to edit the site, will be blocked. Currently the government cannot do so because of the safe harbor rule. This rule means that if copyrighted content is uploaded to a site, the site itself can't be held responsible for the actions of the user. This means that the user willed get sued, not the website. SOPA will abolish that rule. A great example of SOPA's concept is, lets say a drunk crashes his BMW into your house. The cause of the accident was clearly the drivers fault and was not caused by a technical malfunction in the car. Because you want money to fix your house, you sue BMW because some guy crashed his BMW into your house. So basically you're holding BMW responsible for what a drunk did to your home. That is the concept of SOPA.
Because Sopa will end easy/legal access to sites that allow the user to upload content, online freedom of speech will also be greatly affected. SOPA isn't only about piracy, it is also about censorship. SOPA not only grants the American government power, but also the mega-corporations suffering from piracy. As a result Hollywood and the UMG and other mega-corporations will gain power. Mega-corporations tend to maintain their financial dominance through marketing a having a strangle-hold on all channels of product promotion. These mega-corporations bombard every single nook and cranny of the media with their products. Its kind of hard not to notice that. Turn on a TV, and every 5 minutes there will be a commercial break, turn on a radio, there will be a lot of commercials, no matter where you go, there will be advertising. Even on You-tube there are "advertising" videos, but the difference with You-tube is that the message the video sends, depends on the users opinion o the product. The user may love the product and urge the viewer to get it too, or the user may hate it and warn the viewer to stay away from it. On You-tube, ideas and opinions are promoted freely and independently. Smaller, independent companies use you-tube as a way to promote their products and to make themselves known to the general public. These smaller "Indy" companies as they're called often make use of "WTF is.....?" videos to promote their products. These videos are made by customers whether they be satisfied or unsatisfied. These videos give "Indy" companies a voice they would not have had without you-tube. Besides being a platform with a lot of pirated videos on it and the main way "Indy" companies promote their products, it is also the one media branch that mega-corporations do not have complete control over and have not been able to completely flood with their advertisements. One of the companies sponsoring the SOPA bill is EA Games. They happen to own the biggest FPS franchise in the world. EA would of course love to stay the biggest FPS franchise, and it would love that competition would stop being promoted. That is why they are sponsoring SOPA so those two wishes of theirs will come true, at our expense. If you-tube goes down a great deal of our freedom of speech will be gone. Sadly SOPA will also get rid of any other site that will allow us to express ourselves like blogger and social networks. Facebook would go down because some could post something that is copyright as their status or could put a copyright image as their profile picture. Blogger would go down for similar reasons.
SOPA would have disastrous consequences which are not only disastrous, but also unnecessary. SOPA would hardly solve anything. To begin with there are ways around DNS blocking. Software and security engineers from big companies like Google and Yahoo have brought up this point. If you simply enter the IP adress of a site you will still be able to access the site regardless of the DNS block. These people know what they're talking about, so it would seem like a good idea to listen to them. One of the many dangerous and scary things about this bill is that the people debating about it, aren't to well informed of what they are talking about. “The vast majority of the people debating have no idea what it is. They hardly know how to use the Internet for one thing. They have freely admitted that." John Bain - UK law graduate. There were some debaters who suggested speaking to people who were more informed of the subject. Believe it or not they were in the minority. Currently we have 50 to 70 people discussing the fate of the largest and most important technological innovation we've had in a long time. Most of those 50-70 people don't really know what they're talking about and what kind of effects their choices will have. Personally I personally, do not think this is a good idea. "It's like putting toddlers at the controls of a 747, but not just a 747, every 747, 777, Airbus A320, every aircraft in the world. Do you think that's a good idea? No." John Bain. Valve, a company directly affected by piracy, disagrees with SOPA's approach. They said that "piracy is a service problem and the way to defeat piracy is to provide a better service than the pirate."
SOPA needs to be stopped. It will have disastrous consequences not only on American society, but also on the world. Its effects are not only horrific, they are also pointless. SOPA also comes with a twin though, which is not to be forgotten. This twin is called PIPA (Protect IP Act) PIPA, has similar consequences to SOPA and is not to be forgotten. Even if SOPA falls, PIPA will need to be next. Currently many people are working hard fighting SOPA and PIPA. There are many videos on YouTube raising awareness, and many petitions on the Internet that can be signed that fight SOPA and PIPA. There is also a group called "Anonymous" that is fighting for freedom of speech, and is thus fighting SOPA. Anonymous is a group that is fighting SOPA through "hacktivism". One last thing to think about. What about the next You-tube? What about the next technological innovation that doesn't get the money it needs to flourish, because the laws are so strict that investors are to afraid to invest. SOPA needs to be stopped, and if this is what the Mayans predicted, that gives us all the more reason to try and fight back.
Your blog was detailed and clear. The conclusion was well-written and the thesis was very clear. I could see that SOPA needs to be stopped and it's effects it would have if it was passed. You could make some a link to Wikipedia's article on SOPA. The blogpost made me think about how our future will be affected by SOPA and why it should be stopped. I wonder when did the American Government came up with SOPA and who suggested the idea. This is important because normal teenagers rely on internet for everything and SOPA would "destroy" the internet. I disagree with the point of destroying the internet. You could be biased about the topic because you are using the sites mentioned in the blogpost for the majority of your time. Another thing to consider is the other perspective, it would help to have both sides of the coin and to evaluate the pros and cons of SOPA. Overall, this was a well written blogpost and a very interesting blogpost to read.
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