Week+3+-+20.1.2012

Week 3 - 20.1.2012
SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill currently being debated in the United States House of Representatives. Among limiting many popular internet uses, it is an agent in the ongoing battle against Internet Piracy. If passed, the bill would provide American law enforcements with a vast amount of control over the censorship of content and websites on the internet. The bill is argued to protect intellectual property, but in all honesty, I’m not too concerned over who posts my Youtube video on their site and in doing so supposedly infringes on my copyright. In fact, I’m glad if they plan on sharing my video with users of the World Wide Web.

The reality is, those benefiting from the bill are the same major label media conglomerates which already have an unmatched amount of control over our everyday lives. By allowing them to control what we post, upload/download, and essentially do on the internet, we are basically allowing them to only further intensify their grasp over us, the people.

Some interesting protesting techniques have emerged due to this bill and in my opinion, they demonstrate the incredulous power of the internet. Sites such as Google and Wikipedia (to name a few) ‘blacked out’ their websites on January 18th in hopes of raising awareness to the issue of SOPA and internet censorship. But perhaps the most interesting response from protesters has been the attacks on American government, film, and music industry websites. The online activist group Anonymous has claimed responsibility to shutting down these sites as a response to the recent action against the online file sharing service, MegaUpload, and its founders.

Stop Online Piracy Act MEGAUPLOAD ARRESTS TRIGGER RETALIATION ATTACKS [|The SOPA blackout]
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