Post by Zylaa on Nov 16, 2011 21:17:27 GMT -5
This article describes it much better than I could. Two bills in the US Senate and House of Representatives are seeking to take internet censorship way beyond anything reasonable or rational.
Please, please, please, if you are a US Citizen, take five seconds to write your Representatives. Congressional representatives, as this article points out, are not the most internet-savvy group of people, and quite possibly they don't all understand the horrifying implications of the bill they're signing into law.
Thank you all for your time. Please help spread the word.
Edit-- And here's the link to the actual text of the bill (Thank you GLQ!)
The intentions are not bad — the bill is meant to protect the properties of producers of entertainment — music, television, movies, etc. However, to say it plans to overreach would be putting it politely. What it seeks to do, however, is to give corporations the power to take down sites the coporations think infringe on their copyrighted properties. Yes, just sites. Sites with domain names they don’t like, sites with content they don’t like — and people who distribute or link to sites or content they don’t like. That includes the simple act of sharing something on Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr. For example, if the BBC wanted to, they could go after the person who made this:
((A short Dr. Who gif))
And they could claim it contains copyrighted material and the creator of this gif is infringing upon the BBC’s rights. And then, they could also shut down the site on which it appears and go after every person who shared it. You know, all the people listed here, all of them unlawful disseminators of copyrighted material. This would reach as far as someone posting a video of themselves singing a popular song at karaoke night on Facebook (often by way of YouTube) to, as I said before, someone who takes a video while copyrighted music plays in the background. From Fight For the Future:
It’ll give the government new powers to block Americans’ access websites that corporations don’t like. The bill would criminalize posting all sorts of standard web content — music playing in the background of videos, footage of people dancing, kids playing video games, and posting video of people playing cover songs.
As for the whole “prison” thing, I’d like to tell you that’s just hyperbole, but, insanely enough, it is not. From American Censorship, under SOPA:
It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.
((A short Dr. Who gif))
And they could claim it contains copyrighted material and the creator of this gif is infringing upon the BBC’s rights. And then, they could also shut down the site on which it appears and go after every person who shared it. You know, all the people listed here, all of them unlawful disseminators of copyrighted material. This would reach as far as someone posting a video of themselves singing a popular song at karaoke night on Facebook (often by way of YouTube) to, as I said before, someone who takes a video while copyrighted music plays in the background. From Fight For the Future:
It’ll give the government new powers to block Americans’ access websites that corporations don’t like. The bill would criminalize posting all sorts of standard web content — music playing in the background of videos, footage of people dancing, kids playing video games, and posting video of people playing cover songs.
As for the whole “prison” thing, I’d like to tell you that’s just hyperbole, but, insanely enough, it is not. From American Censorship, under SOPA:
It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.
Please, please, please, if you are a US Citizen, take five seconds to write your Representatives. Congressional representatives, as this article points out, are not the most internet-savvy group of people, and quite possibly they don't all understand the horrifying implications of the bill they're signing into law.
Thank you all for your time. Please help spread the word.
Edit-- And here's the link to the actual text of the bill (Thank you GLQ!)