I don’t like these bills, and neither should you.
First, my perspective.
I’m a content provider and a copyright holder. I don’t want anyone else taking my intellectual property without permission and/or compensation. This isn’t just about MCM; I’ve also written a book (The Art of Sculling) that has been in print for twenty years, and while the revenue from that book is tiny, it is payment for my work and no one should be able to access that work without paying for it.
I get the movie producers’, actors’, artists, and musicians’ perspective and agree with it.
The two bills currently before Congress are waaaaay too overreaching – sure they solve the problem of internet piracy. So would shutting down the internet. While SOPA/PIPA don’t go that far, they do make innocent parties suffer for the acts of others.
Here’s how this could affect me – and you, loyal reader.
Say someone posts a comment with a link to a copyrighted video, image, document, song; and the Feds get a complaint. Under SOPA/PIPA, they could legally shut down MCM immediately, and I’d have to spend tons of time and energy dealing with the issue before I could get MCM back up and running. That would harm me, and end your ability to access MCM.
Bob Wilson provides more insight:
“First, the government would have been able to force search engines to “delist” any website they suspected of these activities. The second would be to require ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) to disable “Domain Name Service” to the suspected sites. The DNS service is essentially what allows the “domain name” that you are familiar with to work.”
I get the intellectual property argument – I absolutely get it. But SOPA/PIPA are a heavy-handed, highly punitive, and poorly designed solution that would cause far more damage than necessary.
Sign the SOPA/PIPA petition, and let’s stop this idiocy.
Jan
21
