Today we are waking up to a major protest to the SOPA and PIPA bill proposals that are being considered to become law. While I can understand the reasoning behind these proposals to help protect copyrighted materials, I do believe that it is taking power a bit too far and could result and a huge backlash and repercussions that would cause more damage than good.
When I first heard of this I was reminded of when Google, for very similar reasons left the PRC due to over-censorship. It got to be way out of hand and caused no end of a waste on time, personnel and became necessary to pull out all together. I can see how this could happen within a country like China that has an all controlling one party government and has a zero tolerance level to anything that might suggest an opposing view. In fact, it is the only country that I have ever been to that you can pick up a newspaper and only read good news, mostly news about how wonderful the government is. I remember being in a hotel room and while watching BBC the station would often experience “down time” or be swiftly changed to a commercial to avoid broadcasting something critical of its government! Is this what you want?
Now, while I understand that the idea behind SOPA is not to avoid our talking negatively about our government, I still do not see how in the USA we would have agencies of any kind making sweeping Gestapo type controls over the INTERNET. It is almost as silly as having the police show up at your door and take your car away because it had been reported that you had run a red light. It is already actually easy enough to find anyone who is working illegally through the digital tracks that are left behind, it will eventually catch up with you, but to start censoring everything because there is illegal activity online. It is almost as silly as closing down a discotheque because there are some people who have sold drugs there.
I’m afraid that law enforcement needs to just realize that they will just have to work harder in order to stop the bad guys without punishing the rest of the world. Let’s try to stay “the free world” and not succumb to a all controlling, manipulative nation! What do you think?
