[drmchsr0] Thomas Alva Edison would have LOVED THIS – SOPA/PIPA
on January 19th, 2012 at 12:00 am
tl;dr: SOPA and PROTECT IP is bad and Shocker was behind SOPA. Now let’s travel through time and space and RIDER KICK Kamen Rider Decade.
If you haven’t heard, America, your leaders are trying to destroy the Internet for good, along with tons of small businesses and quite possibly the global economy.
These two ways corporations are trying to use are called the SOPA Bill and the PROTECT IP Bill.
If you haven’t read up on the Bills themselves, there’s a few places that explain it. (Mostly SOPA stuff, but PROTECT IP is similar)
If you thought SOPA would cause Wikipedia to shut down and all, or Reddit to finally close, or 4chan to be anally raped by a legislative baton, you’re half right. As I understand it, the Bills, should they pass, would give the US the power to effectively forcibly break the Internet. And as much as I think the Internet in general needs to be spanked a few times, this is NOT the way to go.
In Singapore, SOPA and PROTECT IP are basically carved into our lawbooks. Copyright infringement is considered a criminal offense, subject to jailtime for even parallel-importing Chinese Coca-Cola (been done before, thank you Odex for abusing this). While Singapore symbolically blocks 100 of the most offensive sites, we’ve got the nonsense in SOPA and PROTECT IP that allows our government to effectively seize control of an offending site and whatnot. Hilariously enough, I have no recollection of it being put to use, but it’s there, all right.
The potential abuse for this law is so staggering, it could finally cause the shutdown of the global economy as we know it. All you need is a group of disgruntled OWS protestors inside Wall Street and a Harddrive full of porn ripped from a porn paysite…
You get the picture.
To be honest, I do understand that many, many people make their living on the Internet (and I require Google et al to DO MY JORB). Actual content creators (and not MPAA et al) solely rely on the Internet to make money. Artists on deviantArt require commissions to survive. Amateur craftsmen require Etsy and other related sites to hawk their wares. Some companies require an Internet connection to use their Production Line Management Software. Indie game developers and musicians require the Internet for exposure and money, since they can’t kill themselves going on tour.
And obviously, even the most crabby hermit would know of Justin Bieber.
If you’d like to experience how I live, then go ahead and pretend that your government is doing the right thing by doing the same thing Britain did in the 17th century. Or what Thomas Alva Edison did to create Hollywood (unsurprisingly, they didn’t learn their lessons).
And as for anyone who scream “censorship”, give it a break. I’m not supposed to be blogging and I’m still alive, fine and holding down a steady job despite being considered a criminal simply because I refuse to follow either materialism or going against my leaders.
