Yet again the United States government is trying to stop piracy on the Internet, which is an impossible task, every time a website is taken offline, five others will go online! A fact that seems to be lost on governments around the world, the very same governments that sanction big organisations, like the RIAA and MPAA to sue single parents for tens of millions because their child has downloaded/shared 20 songs or a couple of movies, a gross disproportionate punishment!
The latest attack on internet freedoms is called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which will forbid US based companies doing business with alleged copyright infringers and search engines will be forced to remove links to such sites, such as thepiratebay.org, under the proposed legislation, this site could be taken down for posting this link despite not actually sharing anything illegal! And I would not be allowed to tell you how to circumvent any effort to block access to these filesharing/streaming websites through proxies and alternative DNS services, for example!
Back to disproportionate punishments, if any person or group is caught streaming copyrighted material without permission ten times within six months could face upto five years jail time, courts hand out lesser sentences for rapists and murders, which is fucked up! Obviously this will only affect individuals in the United States, at least until other countries copy these measures, should the act actually make it into legislation! Several large companies and organisations are vehemently against this proposed legislation including the company that hosts this website, 1&1 Internet and Wikipedia who plan to take their English site down for 24hrs tomorrow alongside other websites! Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn, and AOL are also opposed to the legislation.
Basically the US government aided by the music industry, movie industry and other copyright bodies are trying to erode the basic principles that the internet was build upon, freedom of expression/information and non-regulation. If this legislation does pass, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the giants of the Internet such as Google, Facebook and Twitter move outside the reach of this legislation, which would be a massive blow to the US economy! After all, these are companies that are solely based upon the internet, they can move anywhere without effecting the end users!
Say NO to the systematic destruction of what the internet stands for by the music and movie industries aided by a corrupt government that is only interested in advancing the interests of big business at the cost of the average Joe on the street! Watch the video @ Fight for the Future!