Tuesday, December 27, 2011

SOPA: Take your medicine, it'll make you feel better....

SOPA appears to be just what the doctor ordered for all this despicable information/internet piracy going on these days.

According to the MPAA, "SOPA will target rogue sites that knowingly and deliberately engage in the illegal distribution of stolen content, including movies and television shows, for profit." 

Sounds completely sensible, doesn't it?  Or.... is SOPA not what it seems?

Like buying Dr. Daniels Wonder Worker Lotion to cure what ails ya, proponents of the SOPA bill would have us believing that they are only going to police and shut down illegal websites that are knowingly pirating.   However when you start thinking about curtailing the public's open access to a critical means of information flow, the internet, you get me to thinking about George Orwells famous book 1984, and breaking out into song....."We got Trouble Right Here In River City".

The legislated freedom of corporations, and even governments, to arbitrarily shut down internet access reminds me of the firewalls of China, the censoring of books, and the retoric of dictatorships, all of them knowing much better than we ourselves know about what is really good for us.

Unfortunately, I am not doing the best job of articulating the reasons behind my angst on this bill.  However a superb article from the International Business Times does a much better job of addressing this issue, and posing some hard questions for us to consider.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/272580/20111225/sopa-bill-2012-things-know-controversial-legislation.htm

Read, and then ask yourself whether you are ok just taking whatever Dr. Big (Big Business, Big Government) wants to prescribe to you  - or will you research your ailment and treatment options before you take the medicine.

Oh wait, never mind, you can't access the website,  it's been shut down.

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