Pretend you own a business. Or maybe you do. You own a business, and you have an employee that runs the cash register for you. At the end of the day, you are counting down the cash register and you discover that one of the twenties looks funny, feels funny. You hold it up to the light and you realize that it's a counterfeit twenty dollar bill.
You call the police and they come to your store. You expect that they will want to know who passed the twenty to your employee, so you have your store security tapes ready for the police to look at, and your employee is there to be questioned. You feel bad that you have the twenty, and you've lost twenty dollars, but you feel good that you are doing your civic duty helping the police catch the criminal.
You are in for a surprise though. When the police get there, instead of doing all of these things that you expect, they close your business. They shut you down, padlock your door, and maybe even arrest you. Then the judge at your trial closes your business for good, putting you and your employee out of your jobs, your livelihood. You didn't print the twenty dollar bill, you didn't pass the twenty dollar bill, but because the twenty dollar bill ended up in your cash register, you are held responsible and, in addition to putting two people out of their jobs, your community is deprived of a great place to shop...or maybe the only place in the community to shop...maybe you're the only grocery store for miles. But it doesn't matter. The government makes the rules, and they decided it's easier to close your shop and punish you than it is to go after the people who are making and passing the bad money.
What SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Internet Protocol Act) laws would do is the exact same thing. Instead of going after people who post illegal or pirated content, organizations like the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have spent a lot of money and time trying to get Congress to take the lazy way out and just find websites that MAY have pirated, illegal or copyrighted material on them and shut them down (this could include something as simple as your five year old copying a picture of Barney and posting it as her profile picture on MySpace). I say may because my understanding is that these laws would be so broad that the government wouldn't actually have to PROVE that there is illegal or pirated material on the website, all it would take is the SUSPICION that there MAY be illegal or pirated material on a website. And if they can't actually shut the website down (because some of those pesky websites are in other countries that just don't believe in kowtowing to the US on a whim), the government would have the right to BLOCK YOUR ACCESS TO THESE WEBSITES.
In other words, our government would have the right, for no reason other than someone's paranoia, to dictate what websites you may or may not visit.
It isn't limited to the Government, either. Major media outlets are also supporting SOPA and PIPA. Supporting these bills so much so that, until today, despite the fact that it's all many of us "geeks" have been talking about for weeks in social media - major media, with one notable exception (THANK YOU CURRENT TV!) has barely mentioned these bills. Yesterday, however, it was a little hard to ignore...I loved the Google "black box" over the name. Wikipedia, Wired, Reddit, and many other websites also participated in the blackout, as did many internet users. All of the major media outlets like NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum are FOR the bills and are supporting them. Some stations even ran pro-SOPA commercials. Their news stories they were finally forced to run talked about how online piracy is costing billions of dollars and millions of jobs a year, and none that I saw ever mentioned the loss of out freedoms if these bills were to take effect. Other than Current TV, that is.
I read and listen to the conservative pundits blathering on and on about Socialist this and Socialist that, and I just roll my eyes. This however....this chills me to the bone. I feel so strongly against SOPA and PIPA that I took a stand yesterday (Wednesday, January 18th, 2012) and starting at midnight I did not use social media or personal email at all - no computer, no cell phone, nothing. My entire internet usage was limited to helping my husband look for a job on job-hunting websites. If we weren't in the tight spot we're in, I wouldn't have even done that. But no Facebook, no Twitter, no personal email for 24 hours. It was hard, I will admit. My cell phone blinged incessantly all day with Facebook updates and Tweets, and I unconciously reached for it a number of times. But I didn't open one thing. Did I make a difference? Who knows. It was hard for me. Yesterday opened my eyes to just how much time I spend on social media, (which is a good thing), and how much I would miss it if it were taken away.
I believe that if you write a song, paint a picture, take a photograph, that it is yours, and you and only should have the right to say how it is used, and to be compensated for that use. However, despite what the RIAA and the MPAA and the major media and the supporters in Congress say, NO ONE should have the right to tell me what websites I as an adult may visit. Don't kill the fly by burning down the house, get up off your ass and hunt it down. And leave my computer alone.
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