SOPA (and other attempts to limit free speech)

SOPA, or the "Stop Online Piracy Act" was an attempt to censor the internet by using "piracy" of intellectual property as a jumping point. The bill was supported by companies such as MPAA, Nike, Pearsons Education, Sony and Viacom, among over 100 other companies and organizations, all companies that aim to lose business because teenagers are posting movies on youtube or sharing math textbook problems on the internet so other kids don't have to purchase them. While any normal person would admit that, yes, you really shouldn't be giving away IP like this, one really has to think about how severe these "crimes" should be treated as. If SOPA had been passed there would had been a major decrease in personal privacy, as law enforcement would be able to monitor your online actions closely, and act upon copyright infringements like they're never been able to in the past. Any website deemed in violation of copyright infringement would be banned, which is as we like to call it, censorship. Currently if you decided to stream a video online, like posting a movie in 20 parts on youtube, there are basically no negative consequences, but is SOPA had been passed there would be up to 5 years of jail time for anyone caught doing so.

Other attempts by congress to effectively censor the internet include:

(Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or (PIPA)

Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA)

Also, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is currently waiting for approval from the Senate to be passed into law. We had a good discussion in our class about this, here was my views on CISPA:

I personally can't believe that there is another bill like this after the whole SOPA fiasco. Politicians are being swayed into forcing censorship and slowly becoming big brother. The idea that companies like Facebook would be required by law to share information that could possibly help in the 'cyber threat" is ridiculous. This sounds like they are looking for an excuse to gain information about us without our expressed permission or even having us know they are obtaining this information or why. Maybe is Facebook and other similar companies notified you whenever your information was being accessed that would be one thing... but I doubt that they would. 

However, I do think that if you are willing to share information on the internet you should be aware that almost anyone can access that information. This is one of the main reasons that identity theft is such a huge problem on the internet, it's really easy to get data from insecure websites, and there is no grantee that the site you are accessing is legitimate, secure or has your best interests and privacy in mind. Also, 99.9% of people don't read the privacy agreements in the terms of use of websites... which they should. 

So, basically, I think CISPA is ridiculous and I hope it gets squashed like SOPA did!

After further research into CISPA, I found that the tally of votes from the house reads like this:

Affiliation         Yes votes    No votes   Did not vote

Democratic      42              140          8

Republican       206            28            7

I honest become more and more Liberal when I read stuff like this. But that's another blog!