The Bills were aptly nicknamed “the internet kill switch” because of the unprecedented powers they gave to government to shut down websites sharing information for very minor infractions. In fact, the Bills were so drastic they were compared to the powers that Communist China asserts over the internet to prevent their people from accessing information that may be critical of government and may spawn populist revolutions. Essentially this Bill was so over-the-top that if you accidentally linked to a copyrighted source, even if you cited and credited that source, your site could be taken down permanently. Personally, I believe the true purpose of the Bill was to allow the government to shut down any website they want that may be critical or may expose corruption. The Bills would give them tools to circumvent the first amendment and quell freedom of speech by citing copyright infringements.
The way internet sites like YouTube work currently is everyone is free to post videos. If the video is an infringement of a copyright, the rightful owner just contacts YouTube and the video is immediately taken down. Obviously there can also be civil consequences, but there is certainly not the threat of criminal consequences or being iced from the internet.
Image by wolfgang.wedenig via Flickr
The SOPA and PIPA Bills are being recklessly pushed through Congress by lobbyists, particularly Hollywood, but also by a power hungry and corrupt government that is terrified of transparency.
Topolsky goes on to say, “The gist of the bill is that it gives content creators the power to force ISPs, search engines or payment services to shut down access to a Web site that the owner believes violated its copyright. On its face, the bill is designed to stop access to foreign Web sites that are profiting off of stolen content. (U.S.-based business can simply be dragged into court.) In reality, it’s much more insidious than that.”
The Bill is also troubling after the overly aggressive NDAA Bill was just passed allowing American citizens to be detained without a trial indefinitely.
The internet has been an information revolution. It has allowed us to share an unprecedented amount of knowledge with each other allowing us to solve problems we could have never solved otherwise. It has also allowed us to hold governments and corporations accountable with citizen videos, indie internet news sites, Wikileaks, etc.
The real crime would be taking this power away from the people so that a handful of billionaires can keep their monopolies and so that corrupt governments can continue to shift more power from the people to the 1%. But please don’t think it’s over. Obama promised he wouldn’t sign NDAA and he did. Its great that Congress claims to have changed their tune, but words and actions are very different. Keep your eyes on this situation.
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