Today is the day that many sites went dark, or offered a way for user to sign Google’s petition to put to stop to SOPA and PIPA, to show their support for our liberties that may be threatened. I want to let everyone know that we are also in opposition to the bills, but are keeping our site open for the day, because of the very nature of what we offer here.
And that is exactly what is threatened. Even before the bills are passed, there have been countless issues when it comes to copyrighted conent. The most recent that comes to mind is what happened to Tech News Today – essentially, there was a case of copyright violation that they reported on, and in doing so, had their own content taken down sighting that that too was copyright violation. In that case, Google was the one that took them down, because of the fear that content owners instill with current law.
If the bill is passes, Universal could’ve gone much farther, taking out both You Tube and the TWiT network, not just erasing them from the common way to access their site, but also freezing their advertising payments – all of it without going to court first. In TNT’s case, they would probaby win – but not after the damage would be done, causing TWiT and Google lose thousands of dollars. TNT still lost out by having their video taken down for 10 days, which is an eternity in news time. This story has only remained relevant because of the bigger picture that SOPA and PIPA are trying to realize.
Simply put, the same thing could happen to us here. And while there have been changes to bill that made the SOPA bill more legitimate, it isn’t enough to protect our freedoms. One such change makes it more clear that US websites are exempt from the bill, but limits that to .com, .net and a few other domains. While that’s great for us – the TWiT network has a .tv domain, and at one point, I had a .tk domain.
This shows our government just doesn’t get it yet. These old farts that readily admit they don’t know enough about how the internet works, still want to pass this ‘before it’s too late’. Rep. Smith stated at the original hearing that he didn’t see a reason to change the part of the bill that would effect DNS, later pulling a 180. When our country was built, they knew the value of information, and helped get it out to the masses with the postal service and newspapers. Now, information is be threatened to be taken away from all Americans.
That being said, we want to make it clear that piracy hurts so many people – and is a major problem on the main topic of subject on this blog. It would be great if we could stop it, but this isn’t the way. Not only does it limit everyone, but it won’t stop anyone from stealing copyrighted content. While our fears might not come to fruition if either bill is passed, the possibility will still be there, and it will be tempting for content owners to abuse it.
If you want to sign the Google petition, you can click here.
Well said sir.
The main problem is, the initial concept perhaps came out of good intentions because piracy and such is ridiculously huge. But this doesn’t really combat that. It becomes like the situation with the internet in China.
Exactly.And I understand the supporters of the bill’s stance. It’s not design to destroy the internet. But as I said, with what happened to TNT, they’re already using the DMCA in a way that it wasn’t intended for. We can’t leave it to companies to do the right thing. Even Google does evil from time to time.