SOPA (stop online piracy act) is set to be voted on in the senate on this upcoming wednesday.
Welcome to Corporate Censorship.
The senate announced that this bill would be put off until next year, but in a highly questionable move, they quietly rescheduled the vote for a special session of congress next week, while most news outlets are reporting that it is put off for the time being. This 'rush' to implement the bill is intended to hurry the bill into law before the rising public outcry becomes widespread.
I cannot even begin to express the magnitude of idiocy in this bill. Essentially, any site, on which any user, posts any content of any kind which is even claimed (even falsely) to be copyrighted... can result in the entire site being blacklisted from functioning inside the US (and in many cases abroad as well). The proposed system for this occurring eliminates due process of law, reasonable objection, or even scrutiny of the claim.
Copyrighted content claims can include:
quoted text
images
video content
music content
advertisements containing links to sites containing any of the above
and user posted links to sites which contain any of the above
The terms of the law sound too ridiculous to be real. But it is.
Realistically, large multibillion dollar sites like google, **24**, and youtube, will manage to avoid being shut down (even though all 3 are in massive violation of the proposed law). But you can more or less kiss small upstart online businesses goodbye.
Entrepreneurial groups are warning that if the bill passes, that supporting upstart internet business may become a dangerous investment. And that innovation on the internet is direly threatened.
The engineers who created the internet are claiming that it may be seriously detrimental to the security and functionality of the internet internationally.
Amnesty international claims that it will help totalitarian regimes to control the flow of information.
Fair Use claims that the bill will destroy almost everything they've achieved vs. corporate domination of the law.
Wikipedia site owner is threatening to shut the site down if the bill passes, not that he'd have to, it's part of the half the internet which would be criminalized by this bill.
Numerous small business lawyers are claiming that the bill would empower large corporations to abuse the law to crush upstart competition.
Here's a link to a video on the topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM(just posting this link may become illegal next week)
here is a quoted post from another forum (which may also become illegal next week):
If you don't know what to do, or how to do anything about this...
Or maybe your not from American... you can still stop this:
STEAL THIS VIDEO AND HELP SAVE THE INTERNET!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&fe...&v=Rr1yosLghyU
Americans sign the petition here: http://americancensorship.org
http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/sopa/
Use your Tumblr account.. Tweet #SOPA and #ProtectIP two government acts/bills designed to take down your internet freedom.
Tell everyone you know about this and if you have american friends make sure they are aware of the issue and tell them to spread the word.
http://americancensorship.org has many ways you can get involved, last week alone over 1 million emails were sent to government officials about this subject.
It's worth pointing out that I am not a conspiracy theorist type, nor am I highly politically active. This issue is simply too large to happily ignore. And the implications for even the future of the BEA (and most other internet forums) are literally at stake here. Do something, unless you want the RIAA and MPAA to purchase your first ammendment, and due process rights in congress next week. This bill is expected to pass, only 'significant' and 'immediate' public outcry can prevent this train wreck of legislation from occurring.