Have you heard of SOPA? It’s a US bill now before the House Judiciary Committee and has the real potential to kill the Internet, not just in the US, but around the globe.
From Wikipedia:
“[SOPA] would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a felony. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.”
Copyright holders and content creators should be compensated for their work, and it’s disappointing this doesn’t always happen. It’s called the INTERNET. It’s not called the Musicnet, or the Movienet.
SOPA and other such broadly-scoped laws is the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on Charlie’s house in an effort to teach him not to bite fingers.
Looking back at some of the crazy laws of days long past, we laugh at the idiot lawmakers for conceiving such rubbish, meanwhile we consider laws on a magnitude of stupidness never before contemplated.
In another 50 years, it will be our grandkids laughing at us.
[Jan 12 Update]: Another awesome reason why I’m proud to work for Tucows: Earlier today, our CEO announced that we will be “joining the blackout organized by our friends at Reddit by blacking out the Tucows Software Download site on January 18th from 8am to 8pm EST (1300-0100 UTC).” Read more on our corporate blog.