What Does SOPA Mean?

SOPA or the "Stop Online Piracy Act" is a bill congress is trying to pass. The way they have named their bill gives it a innocent sounding appeal. However, the bill is only using 'piracy' as a tool to take control over the internet. Its government intervention at its ugliest, and sadly most people are still unaware of the consequences if this bill gets passed. Of course, yes, the bill is centered around 'piracy', but the steps that the government would have to take to control online piracy would give them the power to shut down the whole internet if they wanted.

If this wasn't actually real, I would think it a joke... This bill, is so unconstitutional, so utterly socialist and wrong, that it in itself should be enough to tell Americans their government has gone so far down a road of depravity its going to take a massive reformation to get it back on track. This is a Marxist train of thought, and something that has already happened to countries like China.

The Bill violates the right of free speech. The first amendment has some mild controversy as to the extent of the conditions and extremes in which it can be defended. But the beauty of the internet is the ability to write and voice your opinions.

The Internet is probably the most important technological advancement of my lifetime. Its strength lies in its open architecture and its ability to allow a framework where all voices can be heard.Read more: MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It - Popular Mechanics

The internet is one of the last frontiers for entrepreneurship. Hundreds of people have been able to use their web presence to start online businesses, websites, and even transfer their newspapers, companies, and stores onto an online journal, website, and marketplace. Its the closest thing that the United States still has to free enterprise. By censoring the internet, not only will freelancer programmers, writers, and advertisers lose massive amounts of work, the future of digital and ecommerce growth will be killed.

Not to mention, the Tech Sector is one of the only parts of our economy where we can still outdo almost everyone else.

Now, the average American's are not internet marketers or entrepreneurs, but their entire internet experience will be changed. The most visited websites, Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Digg, Reddit, Forums, Message Boards are all in danger of being censored or even removed.

Now, how could the government even go about doing this? DNS servers (Domain Name System) is the way website owners send people from their web address to the server that hosts the information they have available for you to view (website). The internet relies on protocol, one of the most important being DNS. With tampering in the DNS the entire internet be much, much more vulnerable to attack (hacking). Our information is already being stolen by China, and this would increase the chances of identity theft, digital content theft, intellectual theft, and more.

There would be Mandated DNS filtering and this would make catastrophic consequences for stability and security. In fact, with the government's tampering, we could actually in more danger of online piracy due to increased vulnerability!

There has already been a protest on the front lines of the internet. Godaddy, the largest domain seller on the internet (having registered over 50 Million domain names) has supported the SOPA. In a mater of days over 37,000 domains were transferred from Godaddy to other registrars. Support against SOPA has already been given from Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, Wikimedia Foundation, Yahoo!, Linkedin, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, and more huge companies.

SOPA is becoming so worrisome, that a group of major websites (Twitter, Facebook, etc) are possibly going to censor themselves (black their websites out) all at once to give unaware Americans a taste of what online censorship could do.

Besides radical economic issues that will result from a government internet:

Under SOPA, you could get 5 years for uploading a Michael Jackson song, one year more than the doctor who killed him.

Anti SOPA Video:

Companies supporting SOPA and the corruption involved in this bill's origins:

Don't just take my word for it, Standford Law Review and Kill SOPA and Tech Dirt

Your new internet plan options: (satire)

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