Today a lot of sites have “gone dark” to highlight the possible consequences of SOPA, aka the “Stop Online Piracy Act”. In certain cases, it could allow the US Government to take action against any site, no matter where that site is based. It is also leaves almost no room for argument, stating that if you “facilitate” file sharing then you could be in breach. Basically, that could mean any site with a upload function. The responsibility for all this falls on the website owner, so by merely allowing comments with am image upload feature you could effectively be “facilitating file sharing” and the US Government can come after you, just because the site is accessible from America.
There’s an article you should read about this here which explains the bill in it’s current form. Please give it a look.
I’ve worked and enjoyed the internet for many years. It was originally setup to be a self-healing network which would allow the sharing of ideas and research. This bill is badly written and the ham-fisted carpet-bombing is very, very wrong. If you are a US resident, go to Google now and sign their petition. Let’s make our opinion known before voting starts on February 24th.
Links – Mashable – Google – AmericanCensorship.org
Thank guys for supporting a great cause, you have my support.
I still find it unbelievable that such poorly thought our legislation had a real possibility of being enacted. The web is a resource for all and shouldn’t be held to the whims of media companies.
No doubt piracy is an issue that needs to be dealt with but a much more nuanced remedy is needed.
Can web pages not be set up to block American IP addresses? I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that but I suspect thats what will happen if it gets enacted. Who’d want to risk be extradited to the states?, because as we’ve seen they WILL do it. I’m still hopeful that common sense will prevail.
i thought this law was just against file share sites with content on them which has not paid for or dosnet have the rights to share it.
i.e the ship site ….and torrentsIf i type in google looking for a illegal download it bring back searches ??? will this stop and should it be stopped..
I would like more info on this as looks scary….
Why change your business model t match the market when you can get regulations in place to force your model on the market.
Well, it’s great news that this was opposed – and it’s great to see so many sites, and so many Americans, protest against it.
It does make me wonder then, why the UK equivalent of this – the Digital Economy Bill – managed to worm it’s way into parliament without any such resistance (even though our rather civilised House of Lords picked it to pieces). One could argue that this is because the UK does not run any large successful Internet services, but I’d say it’s actually because anyone who hears of these Bills, as they come through, has no idea how they will affect their daily lives.
I’m sure this is probably true of the US, and it’s only the staged outage that drummed up the required publicity to stop this going any further.
Ok – the aforementioned UK bill is nowhere near as potentially damaging as the US one, but that does not mean it should be law. It’s still a very ham-fisted approach to Internet regulation, and one that does affect our freedoms. It potentially criminalises everyone who uses the Internet, and although this is unenforceable, what about when you’re the unlucky ‘example’?