By Margaret Hedderman
You could almost hear the screams of college students across the United States as Wikipedia went dark yesterday in protest of PIPA and SOPA. Within hours of the Wikipedia and Reddit blackouts (among many others), Congress pulled a 180 on the two bills that once had near bi-partisan support.
I hope I'm allowed to use this...
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was originally written in response to years of internet piracy of copyrighted films, music, books, and other material. Major lobbyists, including Walt Disney, supported the bill. Nearly everyone can agree on the merits of protecting intellectual material, but the devil is in the details, as they say. According to Wikipedia, SOPA would bar ”advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with allegedly infringing websites, barring search engines from linking to the sites, and requiring Internet service providers (ISP) to block access to the sites.” It could also allegedly shut down sites like YouTube.
Anti-SOPA and PIPA advocates finally got some major political heavyweights on their side when President Obama came out in protest against the two bills. On January 14, Obama Administration said it would not support any bill that could potentially censor the internet.
Both bills are going back to the drawing board for review.
What did you think of the blackout? Did it affect you? Did you even notice? And what do you think will come of revisals to SOPA and PIPA?
I agreed with it, stayed off the internet, and particpated in the blackout for 12 hours (I think) along with other WordPress users. I still have the “Stop Censorship” bar at the top of my sites.
I’m glad these bills are going back for review. I’m no legal expert, but all this throwing out the “baby” with the bathwater mentality is hurting our society in so many ways. We’ve got to stop hurting people just because we don’t want to take the time to think things through to better solutions.
Needed to check an anatomical point doing work early this morning.
Wiki uses good resource for anatomy, but of course was not available.
It took longer to find the info I needed than usual.
As it is so easy to use the internet to look up quick little things, I have found that I don’t keep texts readily at hand any more.
I agree with Sparks In Shadow in that care must be taken in addressing these issues.
Decisions must follow our Constitution, not emotional whims.
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