Google Author Profile
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know about SOPA and PIPA, although realistically, the news media has fallen down quite well on reporting the controversial legislation and the fallout from it.

Even though some of the most high-traffic websites across the board have promised to shut down in protest, and internet founders and giants have come out in protest, the mainstream media coverage has been scant, at best. While industry giants such as Reddit, WordPress.org, and Wikipedia proposed blacking their sites in protest, the coverage by MSN, CNN and others, particularly the past few days, particularly in television, seems to have been conspicuously absent.

What is SOPA?

It’s quite literally rape of the internet for profit. The controversial legislation  could arguably do irreparable damage to the internet and to the free exchange of ideas across the board. The legislation proposes penalties without permitting you the right to face your accuser, or even without being accused at all. It also puts your ISP in the impossible position of becoming the internet police.

It will permit your site to be wiped out without so much as due process. Now in case you don’t believe that can happen to you, consider just a year ago the US Government “accidentally” shut down more than 84000 websites and replaced them with a take down notice that effectively accused them of being child pornographers;what kind of damage could THAT do to your business?

Who’s to Blame for SOPA and PIPA?

The reality is that SOPA and PIPA, and the accompanying foolishness, was and remains,  a bipartisan problem.  Sure, the Republicans are blaming the Democrats, and the Democrats are laying the blame at the feet of the Republicans, but it’s been sponsored and moved forward by  people from both sides of the fence.

These are also people who obviously have no real clue what technology is and why it’s important. Simply stated,it’s our personal opinion that the bill began because lobbyists from the movie and music industry used their clout to get it moved forward. They believed they were losing millions. They decided that using your legislators to promote a bill that could literally kill the last place where a reasonable economy can be found–the internet–was a great idea. Yes, you can blame your legislators, but unless you send a clear message to both the movie industry AND the legislators that this kind of tampering isn’t going to fly, it will simply be proposed again in a different form.

We follow REDDIT in encouraging you to not rent or view movies this weekend to send that message to the movie industry.

Many people say the proposed legislation  was bought and paid for by lobbyists who bring more money to the table than the average website owner can afford.That may or may not be true, but consider that if the movie industry as a whole had not promoted  this kind of legislation, chances are that it would not have taken place. If you want to protest, your best bet may be to send a clear message to the movie industry by aiming your boycotts there.

All that being said… The internet was literally founded upon–promotes and encourages freely exchanged ideas. Keeping those tenets alive is imperative. While no one likes or encourages piracy, it’s important to note that piracy doesn’t really seem to be what SOPA is about.  Much like rape isn’t about sex, SOPA and PIPA are not about fixing  the problem of piracy online. It’s all about control.

In fact, SOPA won’t actually do that much to combat  or control piracy.The reality is that the underbelly of the internet is where a great portion of actual piracy is taking place and this bill, as well as the intellect of the promoters, the movie companies, and the music industry, don’t seem able to grasp that.

While it reportedly targets foreign sites, what the legislation will do is to enact penalties that may or may not be meted out to the right sites. It will also, very effectively remove sites that do little more than mention sites which contain links. In short, it will   penalize those who may have linked to something inadvertently, or linked to a link which has links to something… well you get the idea.

The legislation seeks to play with the DNS system. That, in and of itself is dangerous. While the  office of the attorney general may know law, it’s a fairly safe bet that they haven’t studied technology in a way that makes it safe for them to screw around with the domain name system. Lastly, the bill circumvents due process in nearly every way, and creates a very dangerous precedent.

While your target for email, comments, and protests MUST be the people who wrote, sponsored and promoted this bill, the REAL sponsors behind this attempted rape of the internet are the movie and music industries.

Bear that in mind when you vote for your representatives and take a hard line, as they have tried to do. Keeping in mind who did and did not vote for PIPA and who did and did not sponsor SOPA when you vote is a great way to send a message.

Last, but certainly not least, bear in mind that while SOPA may be temporarily off the table, the danger isn’t nearly over. It, or another bill like it will be back.

If you’re interested in joining the January 18th website blackout here’s how