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Health & Fitness

SOPA, PIPA, and the Light Switch of the Internet

Wikipedia shut down access to it's site for 24 hours in protest of the SOPA and PIPA legislation. If either of these bills were to pass, they would have catastrophic consequences for the internet.

I just recently started my second semester as a Rutgers graduate student. The reason I bring this up is because the joke going around campus yesterday was that all the teachers should make their essays due by the end of the day. This is, of course, because Wikipedia had “gone black” for 24 hours.

By doing this, the site had shut down access to its enormous database of information about the world, and replaced it with a dark, ominous “W” captioned with the title “Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge.” While, jokingly, the lack of access might have bode well for teachers hoping their students would dig a little deeper for information beyond an all-encompassing internet portal, the reality is much more grim than this.

Wikipedia blacked out all access to it’s site in protest of two bills being passed through congress. These two bills, in case you haven’t heard of them yet, are called the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). If either of these bills were to become a law, they would have catastrophic consequences for the way we use the internet on a daily basis.

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Wikipedia was not alone in it’s protest: Reddit, Craigslist, The Free Software Foundation, Wordpress, Mozilla, and Imgur all changed their homepage in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Google put a censor bar over any location where their iconic logo resided, and even Majong, the studio responsible for the hit computer game Minecraft, changed it’s website to a bright red background with bolded white text stating “PIPA & SOPA? How about NOPA!”

These two bills are particularly dangerous legislation because of the way that they would be enforced. While there are many nuanced nitpickings about them, the culmination of these complaints can be summarized as the following: SOPA and PIPA give our government an unprecedented amount of control over the internet. The bills would allow the government to declare sites as “rogue” just by having an assumption that they are doing something illegal. These rogue sites can then be systematically plucked off the internet, as though they were being thrown into a digital jail.

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Under the current law, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, entire websites cannot be held accountable for the actions of a few individual users. Organizations must go after individual entities who commit copyright infringement or file-sharing piracy. This is why you hear about stories like the Recording Industry of America going after children who fileshare. Under SOPA and PIPA, this standard changes. Organizations can now shut down access to entire sites because an individual user decides to share certain content. To use a phrase my grandfather used to say, "It's like throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

So, what does this mean for you? Do you use Facebook to share photos? Do you use YouTube as a way to share videos? How about file sharing services like Dropbox or Megaupload? Personally, I cannot count the number of times I’ve used Dropbox to share group presentation files at school. I also cannot remember how life was conducted before social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. When I want to see if there’s a music video for a new song I heard, I don’t turn on MTV. (they still play music, right?) Instead, I go to YouTube and search the title of the song.

Under SOPA and PIPA, all of these sites could fall within the definition of rogue. Shared that photo of your kid watching an old Mickey Mouse cartoon through Facebook? Disney could have the United States government shut down the entire website. Uploaded a video to YouTube of your trip to an amusement park and set it to the theme song of Star Wars? Fox could make sure you never infringe on their intellectual property again by blocking YouTube entirely. Sent that remastered Beatles song you ripped from your “legally purchased” CD to a friend through Gmail? Not only could EMI have Gmail shut down, but SOPA would allow them to charge you with a felony that could send you to jail for up to 5 years.

These laws could even effect online journalism. Under SOPA and PIPA, there would be great uncertainty about what content is “allowable” and what content will have the entire site shut down. Many online news sites have user generated comments on each article. What if someone posts a link to an illegal file? Is that enough of a reason to shut down an entire site?

Even when filming our recent episode of at John’s Meat Market, we heard the Cheer’s theme song “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” playing while we walked over to the building. Vinnie Losavio explained that he picks certain songs to play from a boom box to set a mood for the store. While we chose not to include this in our video, what if we had? Would this be enough of an unauthorized use to shut down the entire Patch network? These types of worries not only make it difficult for online journalism to operate, but hinder the wide variety of content these sites produce.

Do you really want the same government that made corporations citizens, made it possible for our soldiers to police our own country, and declared frozen pizza a full serving of vegetables deciding which websites are safe for us to view? Do you really think that congress, which now has historically low approval ratings, should be able to concoct a law that radically changes the communication structure of the internet? Do you even think that anyone in congress fully understands or appreciates the glue that holds our web technologies together? If I was a betting man (and I do love a good trip to Atlantic City) I’d place all my chips on a loud “NO!” for all the aforementioned questions.

These laws represent a government that is so egregious and disheartening in its conduct that it is practically impossible for anyone to not feel completely apathetic towards politics. SOPA and PIPA are so anti-American that it makes my blood boil red, white, and blue. We voted President Obama and our current congress into office under the guise of change, and yet here we are again having our rights beaten out of us. For me, the right to an open and unrestricted internet should be up there with the right to free speech, or the right to bear arms.

If you are reading this, then you are an internet user. In some way, shape, or form you have used this world wide web to better yourself — even if it’s as simple as looking up a recipe for peanut butter cookies on some random blog. You’ve opened up lines of communication with total strangers who share common interests, ideas, or beliefs. You’ve used the single most powerful tool that humanity has ever created and you’ve participated in the largest global network ever to exist. So why is it that we are allowing our elected officials to essentially dismantle this incredible medium?

SOPA and PIPA need to be stopped so that future generations can access the same internet we take for granted today. We need to send a message to congress that we will not let them be bought by the lobbyists of the entertainment industry. We must make it clear that they represent us, and that our democratic process has an unpleasant solution if they choose not to.

In New Jersey, only Senator Robert Menendez supports PIPA, although he’s flip-flopped on this issue more than a pancake on a hot griddle. I would strongly suggest contacting him and expressing your displeasure with his stance on the bill. I would also recommend contacting other New Jersey Members of Congress by clicking here to call them or clicking here to email them. You can keep track of individual members and their stance on SOPA and PIPA by clicking here. You can also read more about the dangers of SOPA and PIPA by clicking here. This is too important to ignore!

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