SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is bad. Utilizing the same website censorship used by Iran, China, and Syria, SOPA would give the power of censoring the web to the U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders – mainly the entertainment industry.
If a corporation decides a website is infringing on intellectual property or trafficking counterfeit goods, regardless of whether or not the site is based in the USA, the US Attorney-General can cut off Internet service providers, ad networks, payment processors, and search engines to attempt to censor the website. The website owners would then need to prove their innocence – all while their website is virtually non-existent.
As JerkMagazine.net put it:
If SOPA passes, uploading a Michael Jackson video to YouTube could get you five years in prison. That’s one more year in prison than the doctor who killed him.
Read the bill here: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.112hr3261
Or learn about it in Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
If you feel as we do about SOPA, you can petition the bill on the official US “We the People” website.
