SOPA/PIPA News

Hey guys, back with some SOPA/PIPA updates. Yesterday was phenomenal. The response from people's protests, messages, phone calls, letters, blackouts, and petitions caused quite a stir and has made a whole lot of noise regarding our dislike for SOPA and PIPA. I wanted to take this time to explain what PIPA/SOPA does, and why it would be so dangerous to the internet economy. Since my last article was mostly just a rabble rousing attempt to get you guys out there and looking around, I wanted to now give you a bit more detail, in hopes it will push you to start doing your own research. I gave you a ton of links, after all!

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP) are essentially the same laws. The PIPA being the Senate version of SOPA. Initially, SOPA was becoming way more popular than PIPA, but at this point, PIPA is growing faster and is just as dangerous.

Essentially what PIPA aims to do:
The obvious (and honorable) goal of PIPA is to stop online piracy on the web. Right. A worthy goal to be sure, the issue comes in how this is being done. Private corporations and copyright holders want to be able to shut down websites that are allowing illegal downloading of copyrighted content. Unfortunately for them nearly all of the big piracy websites are not based within the US. So a new approach must be taken. ISPs will be required to shut down domain names that infringe upon the rules detailed by PIPA. Furthermore, US based domains could be sued for their lack of compliance. The bill also gives our government the power to tell advertisers for sites breaking the laws to shut off their accounts, crippling the funding for those websites. Recently, the bill has received some massive additions, that place enormous penalties, for minor infringements. An entire website can be wholly removed and shut down for one singular link believed to break PIPA's rules. User based sites are going to be forced to censor each and every user. If a user posts something that isn't legal under PIPA, the website can be shut down. How awful would it be, how crippled would YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, be if every time someone posted something, it had to meet a huge range of ambiguous laws?

My favorite part.
Nothing would change. Under PIPA, you can still access websites, just by entering the IP address of the domain. Under certain Judges (perhaps a judge not fluent in the workings of the web) could rule to shut down any website found suspect of breaking PIPA. Start-up sights, with little power, and little money, could do nothing to stop this. Soundwave, early YouTube, etc. would be primary targets for this type of legislation. Sites that could provide new innovations to the online culture have to potential to be squashed out before they can grow. Simple things like a song playing in the background of your video, you yourself singing a popular song in a video, a picture from movie or video game, posted to your blog article (the kinda stuff me and Chris do everyday.), a video reenacting scenes from movies or video games, etc. etc. Any content involving copyrighted content is subject to shut-down under PIPA. Users found violating PIPA have the potential of serving up to 5 years of jail time, for something as harmless as lip syncing to your favorite song.

So what I want for you guys now, is this. Next week, call your Senator. Google who your Senator is, if you don't know, and call their office. Call them ever single day next week. Tell them to vote "no" on cloture. Go into their office (again, Google the nearest office) and show them, in person, to vote "no" on cloture. The more physical presence we can make, the more tangible our voice becomes. We have already made a huge impact on this process. Last week, 5 Senators openly opposed PIPA, after yesterdays protests, 35 Senators now openly oppose PIPA. However, the entertainment companies have so much money and pull these days, that they still have the ability to make this happen. The Senators realize this is unpopular, but they don't necessarily understand why. It's easy to imagine they're minds being changed by pretty words, and ambiguous re-wording. We can't stop now.

Post this video to your Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Forum, Blog, whatever. Get this message out to your friends, run a "call your Senator" article or post, get the word out. Let's end this!