Today you are likely seeing a lot of messages on your favorite sites that are denouncing a bill in Congress called SOPA or the “Stop Online Piracy Act”. I get that most people don’t know or care a bit about this issue and just want Wikipedia to be back up. But Wikipedia, like many other sites today, is trying to impress on the public what could happen under this act. The people behind this bill are the record companies and movie studios and they want the power to basically make a website disappear from the internet if they infringe on their copyrights. Now I am not for Piracy but this bill is like taking a hatchet where a scalpel should be used. For example lets say you post photos on Flickr and use it all the time, like me. Then some jerk off puts copyrighted photos on their flickr feed. In theory this bill could allow the copyright holder to petition US ISP’s (ie: Comcast, time Warner, etc) to black out Flickr because they have a user infringing on a copyright. Its “One guy ruining it for everyone” to the max. Its a bad bill and it gives way too much power to government, record companies, and studios. This is only one facet of the bill, they can also force google to remove it from search results and much more! So when your pissed that you can’t access Wikipedia today, keep in mind that this is a real possibility if we don’t voice our opposition to the SOPA bill. Visit http://sopastrike.com/ for more information on how you can participate!

Posted On InInternet privacy