SOPA: Goodbye, Free Speech. It was fun while it lasted.
| 
| 
This article was originally published on 10/31/2011, but as most of the general public is just hearing about SOPA today (Wednesday 1/18/2012), I thought it would be appropriate to put it back on the front page.
Fortunately, as millions of people signed petitions and contacted their representatives, all the negative attention is appearing to make a difference. It is very likely that these bills will NOT be passed!
Whenever you see new legislation being passed, ask yourself a couple questions:
1. Who is lobbying to push this law?
2. Who benefits from it?
3. What loopholes were intentionally added into it?
The House of Representatives is pushing the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill which, like most laws written today, are heavily funded, lobbied, and pushed by the corporate entertainment industry.
A close analysis of this bill reveals that --under the guise of protecting Intellectual Property-- it allows private institutions and the government to take actions that would normally require a due process of law.
To be clear: I am not saying it's acceptable to steal someone else's intellectualy property. What I AM saying is that it is NOT alright to write legislation that deliberately and intentionally cripples your civil rights to freedom of speech, solely for the advantage of corporate interests.
We've pitied China for years about their Internet Firewall (arguably why there are so many hackers there writing really nasty trojans and viruses... Build a wall, and people will work harder on destroying it!) and yet we are poise to castrate our own country even worse.
Aside from granting corporate media the right to effectively pull the plug on any website it has a complaint about, it also allows the government to shut down any sites at all that it deems are of "only limited purpose or use."
Stop right there.
Re-read that. Any website can have it's DNS record pulled (effectively known in the IT world as the "Death Penalty" as it utterly wipes out all existence of the site) without warning or due process if it appeared to be of "only limited purpose or use."
THIS SITE IS "OF LIMITED PURPOSE OR USE!"
If someone in corporate media or the government decides that my opinions here are disagreeable enough, they can effectively shut down this site at whim.
I've been asked a few times now why I am interested in the Occupy protests. A lot of well-intentioned friends will point out that they seem to just be a bunch of hippies looking for a free ride, and they don't even know what they want.
THIS is what I find interesting! Today, millions of people WORLDWIDE are protesting in cities everywhere. Most of them don't even know for sure why they are there, but they know SOMETHING is wrong.
This is a natural, organic reaction to death. You don't know what's killing you, but your biological reaction is to thrash out away from it.
There is something wrong. Most people do not have the mindset or persistence to investigate it so they can adequately voice what is wrong, but the SOPA bill... It's a perfect example of the corruption in our system.
ONE LAST POINT TO PONDER
As a musician, I see the entertainment business differently. People can argue all they want about profits and protecting Intellectual Property, but... Have you ever asked WHO gets over 90% of the revenue of an artists’ work?
It's NOT the person that spent years of blood, sweat, and tears to write and record the song. It's the corporation they had to sign a contract with.
Who, exactly, are we protecting again? Certainly not ourselves.
