picture credits: mashable.com
Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA is a bill that was handed to the United States House of Representatives which makes the sharing of intellectual property (IP) & counterfeit goods a crime. This means that websites that are said to facilitate copyright infringement can be handed court orders and could then be banned from working with online advertising networks, payment facilitators (like PayPal), and even search engines.
Although you might think that this is a bill in the U.S and doesn't have any direct correlation with us here in Malaysia, don't forget that most popular sites that we're using on a daily basis like YouTube, Wikipedia, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. could all fall under that category of "websites that facilitate copyright infringement". To think that if no one could share music, videos, or ideas any longer, what would happen to the internet we've come to know?
The issue is so severe that Wikipedia actually had a blackout on Wednesday in the US for 24 hours in protest: Wikipedia Goes Black in Protest of SOPA. It blows my mind to think how our internet would change if SOPA is passed...
More Reads on SOPA here:
1 comments:
SOPA is dangerous because it's the American Government's way of controlling the last free frontier of communication. With mainstream media having their own agenda, the Internet is practically the only place to disseminate information outside the watchful eyes of the government and corporations.
This is not really about piracy. The real motive is controlling the dissemination of information. As long as the people have a place to voice out the truth without censorship, they don't have the ability to tailor-make and spin everything in accordance to their agenda.
Where else have you heard of the content from wikileaks for instance, but the Internet. Their documents and news are all factual. How long was it before mainstream media got a hold of Occupy Wall Street? What secrets are they trying to keep? What kind of information would they rather propagate?
What impact will SOPA have on the rest of the world? Would it be as easy as switching from Google to Baidu?
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