Strike Against SOPA and PIPA

Today you will see many of your favorite sites and bloggers on strike against SOPA and its little friend PIPA. If you are not sure there is a lot of information out there as to what it is. You could “Google” it, but if SOPA passes there might not be a Google!

Just 2 days ago SOPA was “shelved” for a short time and will NOT be voted on January 24th. However, the bill is being “rewritten” and some speculate as soon as all the hype dies down it will be quietly pushed through.

There are many reasons why this is VERY bad. 

First, SOPA is about copyright infringement, but with SOPA there is no trial, no judge or jury. If a big/little business doesn’t like what you have written they can claim SOPA and you are immediately shut down.

Don’t like a video or picture that was uploaded to Facebook?? Under SOPA you can shut all of Facebook down.

From Mashable: “This means that YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Gmail, Dropbox and millions of other sites would be “Internet sites…dedicated to theft of U.S. property,” under SOPA’s definition. Simply providing a feature that would make it possible for someone to commit copyright infringement or circumvention (see: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0) is enough to get your entire site branded as an infringing site.”

Oh wait!!! That link to Mashable just got me shut down!

Also, you might be easily become a FELON or your kids could. All that has to happen is they infringe on a popular song that was videotaped by a friend and uploaded. Now, under SOPA (again from Mashable) “if you upload a video to YouTube of you singing a popular song, and that song might sell for $1, and your video gets 2,500 views, you are guilty of felony copyright infringement. Furthermore, you can tack on “willful infringement for commercial gain or valued at more than $1,000.”

“This would make you a felon, and if a copyright holder were to bring a suit against you, would give you a criminal record that would make it virtually impossible to gain future employment, and may subject you to up to three years in prison for singing a song. You don’t have to receive any money. You don’t have to gain anything from your video. Simply receiving 2,500 views on a song you sung, which happens to have copyright held by someone else, makes you a felon.”

What can you do? Go HERE and write congress, tell them you like the internet uncensored.