Journal Entry #8
*THIS SENTENCE HAS BEEN CENSORED* *CENSORED* *COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL* Imagine if this were to happen to a website that you frequently use and you weren’t able to see the information you needed. Would you be pleased to see this? On January 18 we were given a sneak preview of how that would feel when nearly 7000 websites went dark in protest of the new bill: Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA is just another way for the government to have more control over us and if we don’t stand up against it, they will pass it and take away our freedom of expression and our free access to knowledge, and it’s essentially only helping the media producers and music artists. If you’ve ever posted portions of a movie or embedded a link to another website on something that you claim to be yours, you’ve committed an illegal act of stealing copyrighted material. Even if you’ve sold a DVD or a CD on Craigslist or eBay or any other site you’ve technically marketed it unlawfully. Some people might agree and say that the SOPA bill is acceptable and will have a positive effect because it puts an end to or better hinders the forbidden acts of piracy but I think it’s the worst piece of legislation that could be enacted. If this bill was passed it would take away our freedom to express ourselves through websites akin to YouTube or through your opinions on a blog. The government expects us to hunt down the person who owns the rights to the movie or song and ask them for permission to use it. That’s irrational! Nobody is going to do that. There are famous people now, take Justin Bieber for example, which were discovered by singing the music of their idols. I don’t ever remember hearing that Bieber contacted the owner of the songs he sang before publishing his videos on YouTube. I also don’t see him getting arrested or being fined for stealing copyrighted material. Why isn’t he getting in trouble when we are? Is it because he’s famous? Now, I’m obviously not making my entire argument regarding Justin Bieber but why is it that big movie producers and music artists are punishing us when they themselves have people guilty of piracy among them? If the SOPA bill was to pass, it would deprive us of the internet and its whole purpose. When we research for projects, we go to Google, Wiki, or other resourceful sites to find the information we lack. Many, if not all, of the websites we come across have links on them, redirecting us to another hopefully accommodating website. This cycle continues for each and every time we look up something in the Google search engine. However, if the SOPA regulation was to be enacted into law, we wouldn’t have that freedom to look at the sites we want because it would be censored. See, the bad thing about this bill is that if the government were to uncover copyrighted material on a website, such as YouTube, they wouldn’t just delete the video or music. No, they would permanently shut down the entire site. YouTube would be no more and that goes for any other site. In no time at all the World Wide Web would be gone because the government destroyed the very meaning of it: sharing ideas and information for all to see. How much money do you think the movie stars and music producers make? Thousands? Millions, perhaps? Yes, they make millions of dollars for each song or movie produced so why are they fretting over some people downloading their stuff illegally. They are multimillionaires and there are still people out there who are purchasing their talents. Some people may say that it’s because we are stealing from them and that we need to pay for it. That may seem like a valid argument, but I don’t agree completely. These producers are just greedy, they have more money than most of us can even imagine and yet they are crying over spilt milk, so to speak. I, myself, have found music on a site that I was on and went and bought it on iTunes so they are still getting my money. I’ll even admit that I’ve downloaded music illegally, but who’s to say that they’ve been absolutely honest themselves? SOPA needs to be extinguished before any damage is done. It’s a ridiculous excuse for music and movie producers to get more money. The government has no reason to pass it because it will only take away one of our basic human rights and an invaluable information superhighway, connecting us to nations around the world…real time.