The United States is dependent on technology, if it was to be stripped away I believe everyone would go insane and light the whole world on fire. You
could say the general population in the U.S. is running off little
devices in their pockets and on computers. These things allow us to access information, education, entertainment, business, and countless other things on the internet. What if we couldn’t access
all these things?
Within the U.S.
House of Representatives and the Senate are bills that go by SOPA (the Stop
Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the Protect IP Act). These bills have intentions of
stopping copyright infringements on websites, which in my opinion and many
others, would make the internet boring and pointless in some ways. A big
opposing force against these bills by the people is that it's going against free speech/expression. To put this in a better
context, SOPA would shutdown millions of websites that one looks at everyday,
such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. Now imagine going a day without those
things, to some people it would be chaotic. Some think, "Well hey, why
don't they just take out the pirated material instead of shutting down the
whole caboodle." Well SOPA just wants to rip into all these websites with
a chainsaw, call it good, and not worry about that website breaking anymore
piracy laws. So if these bills continue and pass one could not watch television
shows and movies, download or even listen to some music. For those of you who
have burned a CD, you’re breaking the law and are going to jail! Also it gives
the government the ability to censor anything they don't want us to see, though
a plus to that would be censoring Anthony Weiner's Weiner.
Unemployment is still high in some places and continuing to
steadily rise and the government does a good job at convincing us that it will
go down. What better way to make more jobs? By first demolishing millions of
job opportunities and revenue of companies; all these great websites we use are
all ran by thousands, even millions of people. If the government found
copyrighted material on the website, at the snap of a finger they could shut it
down without even having to take it to court. Copyright owners have a right to
be paid what they’ve been earned, according to Josiah M. Hesse of Denver
Westword Blogs, using copyrighted material is, “No different from the owner of
a bakery selling bread. Stealing bread is a crime. Stealing a car is a crime.
Stealing music and movies is no different… But it’s a bit of an
oversimplification.” Indeed a very good point, if I made some bread and someone
stole it hindering my sales, I’d hunt that man down and make him eat the whole
loaf and pay me for it right at that second. Though that is the real world, in
the World Wide Web things work differently and if SOPA and PIPA did somehow
pass the negative factors would enormously outweigh the positive.
Reed Hanke
If this bill had passed it would be yet another step the United States’ government has taken towards socialism and oppression of its citizens. Millions of people use the internet every day to access information that even five years ago was unavailable. The internet has skyrocketed in importance for the United States over the past few years. Today people use it for everything from checking the weather to connecting with people, and in most cases its peoples only source of news and current events. There is a much better way to attack piracy and crime over the internet. We should never give the government permission to restrict our freedom to connect with people, receive information, and infringe our privacy.
ReplyDeleteBrennan Burling
The government has finally begun to take internet security seriously with either governmental interests or businesses involved in the music or movie industry. Most American citizens as well as other people around the world quickly jumped to the conclusion that the US government and other governments want to control the internet and its content. However, the US government and others are now just catching up legally with technology and are starting to place vague laws in to action to affect the internet producers, users/consumer, and content. I view that the US government over reacted with the SOPA and PIPA bills by extremely cutting certain content that they deemed as illegally copied or transferred. These bills overall were vaguely basic in what to cut and burn while I hope that the government will go back and refine these bills to be more specific, but also to consider people internet rights. The idea that the internet should have legal safeguards is an awesome and solid idea. Especially since piracy, robbery, and illegally coping legal items are criminal offenses that exist outside the internet should in fact be carried over towards the internet. In the coming weeks, months, or years I hope people optimistically see the positives of the internet criminal justice movement because in life everyone wants to be make sure they are legally protected against injustices.
ReplyDelete--Will
What I find to be the biggest problem with these current pending laws is that those who are in power to pass these laws have no idea what the outcome would be.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that several jobs would be lost if this was to be passed. Today’s modern generation would be lost without Pandora, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, and thousands of other aspect of our daily lives. The biggest push for this is the people who want more money. Such as music artists, these people already make millions. Such as the NFL delay last year and the NBA delay this year. These people wanted more money they already make. So this law would only benefit the few and harm the many. Why should this law be passed when those in power have no idea how massive this effect would have and they are only doing this because of interest groups? Bottom line this is only a business deal, a deal to make more money.