My Anti-SOPA, Anti-PIPA Ramblings
Today is the day of the great internet eclipse with sites like Reddit and Wikipedia going completely dark from 8 to 24 hours in order to raise awareness about two horrible, terrible things that are moving through the House and the Senate here in the United States: SOPA and PIPA. I just want to make a quick post as to why I'm personally opposed to the two acts, specifically SOPA for right now.
SOPA and PIPA's goals are to ultimately stop piracy, and they are mostly crafted through lobbying by companies like the MPAA, RIAA, and the ESA. Do you think your average representative has enough knowledge of the internet and computers to draft something like this themselves? Of course not. To them, the internet is a big truck, or whatever the MPAA tells them it is that month.
The MPAA steps into congress and convinces them that they are in danger of being completely destroyed because of internet piracy. They claim to be losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands, and their profits are dropping, and it's all because of people downloading camera rips of Jack and Jill. (Just kidding, I don't think anyone pirated Jack and Jill.) Oh, and the MPAA's claims are mostly bullshit.
The result is congress drafting horrendous bills that are absolutely overkill, and that miss the point completely. Imagine the problem of piracy being a fly on your friend's face, and congress's response is to launch a nuclear warhead at the fly, thus annihilating your friend, you, and everything within a 50 mile radius.
SOPA, and PIPA, will not stop piracy.
But what they will do is harm people like me. I'm trying to make a living on the internet, like a lot of other people these days. Every day we see new and exciting ideas and starts up emerge right here on the internet because of its absolute freedom and fairness. Anyone can just buy a domain name, rent a server, and launch a website on their own, but SOPA and PIPA threaten this freedom.
For a cooler, more visual representation of the problem, I suggest watching this video.
SOPA and PIPA's goals are to ultimately stop piracy, and they are mostly crafted through lobbying by companies like the MPAA, RIAA, and the ESA. Do you think your average representative has enough knowledge of the internet and computers to draft something like this themselves? Of course not. To them, the internet is a big truck, or whatever the MPAA tells them it is that month.
The MPAA steps into congress and convinces them that they are in danger of being completely destroyed because of internet piracy. They claim to be losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands, and their profits are dropping, and it's all because of people downloading camera rips of Jack and Jill. (Just kidding, I don't think anyone pirated Jack and Jill.) Oh, and the MPAA's claims are mostly bullshit.
The result is congress drafting horrendous bills that are absolutely overkill, and that miss the point completely. Imagine the problem of piracy being a fly on your friend's face, and congress's response is to launch a nuclear warhead at the fly, thus annihilating your friend, you, and everything within a 50 mile radius.
SOPA, and PIPA, will not stop piracy.
But what they will do is harm people like me. I'm trying to make a living on the internet, like a lot of other people these days. Every day we see new and exciting ideas and starts up emerge right here on the internet because of its absolute freedom and fairness. Anyone can just buy a domain name, rent a server, and launch a website on their own, but SOPA and PIPA threaten this freedom.
For a cooler, more visual representation of the problem, I suggest watching this video.
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