Online freedom at stake
If you haven’t been watching the news or reading any news article for the past week, you might not know your freedom of surfing the web almost took a scary hit.
Two bills were proposed on Capital Hill in October, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). These bills have caused a fuss because many feel it is not “pro-Internet,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Even Wikipedia shut down it’s website for 24 hours in protest.
The purposes of both these bills are to cut down on the illegal copyright sale of movies, music, and other physical goods on websites, especially on websites in foreign countries. Now at their best intentions, these bills do try and do some good, but there is a catch.
“I believe these bills take away from the freedom we have as citizens with the Internet,” says Junior Jeannie Wolfe.
These bills don’t just affect the certain websites on the websites like Google. They affect all the websites. It would be like telling a mall owner to shut down because some of the stores were selling counterfeit goods. So the websites that don’t punish the original website get punished.
It is also feared these websites will spark other governments to follow suit and can block websites from having anything that they don’t want like hate speech and bashing of political officials.
Texas Republican Lamar Smith crafted the bill in the House of Representatives. It was meant to build on the Pro-IP Act of 2008. The Pro-IP Act was created to cut down on copyright infringement of patented material online.
“I believe these bills could have been better, music artists should have their work protected,” comments Senior Matt Feagin.
Downloading illegal files isn’t something new since the late 2000s. In 1999 Napster was a hit success for people to download music files. Today many people use torrents, Peer-to-Peer and streaming.
On January 23, 2012 both bills have been shelved indefinitely by Lamar Smith since these bills have received large criticism by the public.
Photo courtesy of
http://www.inquisitr.com/wp-content/2012/01/Google-Search-Homepage-SOPA-PIPA-Censorship.png
10 comments:
Woah, I had no idea this was happening. I feel that as much money that artists make we shouldnt have to spend a dollar on a song, yeah it may not seem like a lot but it adds up.
Jack, I really enjoyed reading your article. I'm doing a research project for FBLA that pertains to this subject so I'll be using your article as reference. Good job.
This is riduculas! I dont see why they want to shut down those websites, nobody wants to pay one dollar on iTunes for a song when you could get it for free. But I like this article because I wasnt sure exactly what they were, good job!
Yea, I agree this thing they did with google, is kinda ridiculous and I don't think along with everyone else, that we are going to pay money for music. Great article Jack.
Great article Jack! Very informative and it keeps me updated.
This is a really good topic because a lot of kids our age don't watch the news anymore, and didn't know about it, including me. In my English class we touched base on it, but this really helped clear any questions up. Wonderful article.
Great article Jack, it really helped me understand what SOPA and PIPA was. I'm glad the bills didn't get passed
Im very happy that the bills didnt pass, or else we wouldnt have enough freedom with the internet like you said. I really enjoyed reading this article!
SOPA is not going to help the way that they think. Nice article, I heard they postponed the vote for Feburary.
I was so worried that these bills were going to be passed. I agree with one of the quotes in the article, it's taking away a lot of our freedom online. Good subject, and good job on the article Jack.
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