SOPA: Kills Internet and Creativity Without Mercy

We have been discussing about SOPA for quite few days and its high time that we realize its adverse effect on the online community. Web and Internet together form a combined open ground for speech and thoughts. We get to hear information, view points, data around the globe via internet. A very short glimpse of what SOPA is ? SOPA is a censorship given to internet, which is of similar kind of censorship given to the movies.

[vimeo width=”600″ height=”300″]http://vimeo.com/31100268[/vimeo]

A movie is always reviewed by a censor committee before it is being released publicly. The committee has certain rules and if the scenes in that movie violate them (like extreme nudity or violence etc) they are likely to be removed or trimmed.

Now you might feel it is a good way to implement similar censorship for internet. But for the web it acts in a different way. Your content posted on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube will be reviewed before it is being posted. You will never be able to post your thoughts on politicians because the Government finds it to be offensive and would remove it. So you will find all the positive information about the ruling party and not the single actual happenings.

You can never find your favorite Movie/TV show clip on Youtube or Facebook because the owner would claim the copyright for each and everything, extending the process the government has the right to imprison the person for 5 years for posting such content on internet.

Your favorite website might be blocked all of a sudden claiming that the website produces offensive content. But the reality might be that one out of the hundred articles would have violated the rule but SOPA will go forward to block the entire website and ask search engines to stop linking form it. So what happens to the rest of the 99 useful articles and information ? Is this what we expect from internet ?

The creators of the act justify SOPA saying that they are aiming to stop the streaming of illegal contents like pirated movies but the point is, people who stream illegal content have the option of using alternate DNS to bring their site live once after it is blocked. Now in that case How effective is the censorship is another big ‘?‘

Just imagine one fine day you go online and find wikipedia blocked for having two words against ‘India‘. Your assignments are under risk, your semester marks might go down. Your research projects could be shut down. So wake up, help internet to be a free bird and let U.S Congress consider bringing some law that will be effective against Piracy without affecting many content producers.

For Bloggers and WebMasters

If you own a blog or website, then you can show your fight against SOPA by placing a banner or ribbon. WordPress SOPA Plugin makes the task simple and if you like to do it manually then you may get the piece of code from Americancensorship.

Websites Related to SOPA:

Submit your Petition to U.S Congress right now using the following websites.

• SOPAStrike
• Fightforfuture

Anonymous Against SOPA

Anonymous do have some message to convey to every internet users to aware about SOPA. We like to add it with this post to bring it to your view.

[youtube width=”600″ height=”344″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GYzD-8BOQU[/youtube]

This video pretty well explains about SOPA and possible things that could happen if SOPA passed successfully. We need a strong bill that understands the development and future of internet, that doesnt limit the content producers, that doesnt restricts the free speech. Else it will be critical as Internet will simply become another US Intranet service with limited resources and you will see maximum paid services online.