STOP Stop Online Piracy Act & Stop PIPA

I decided to take a quick break from a busy day and let you know about my feelings on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) & PIPA (Protect Intellectual Propert Act), two bills in the US house and senate. Unfortunatelly it is not getting enough media coverage to let the masses know what is at stake and the minority who hears about these two bills in media aren't able to make their judgement due to lack of clarification and explanation of what they really mean. 

In plain English we're about to pass bills to censor websites that infringes copyrighted material. These bills would legalize same tecniques used by countries like China & Iran to stop piracy by building a framework for resctriction and surpression.

In addition to that all websites which permit users to add content such as YouTube or Facebook as well as search engines like Google will be legally responsible for every piece of link and media within their site. Small start-ups with online presence can be shut down due to a user posting a link to a different site where copyrighted infringing materials exist.

Interestingly enough copyright owners are currently protected online. We have a legislation in place since 1998, DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which provides copyright owners with legal means to fight piracy. They regulary have content removed from sites like YouTube.

I along with most everyone online piracy is a problem and we need to address it. However these bills reach far beyond their intended target and their shot at stopping online piracy is weak. SOPA & PIPA targets innocent people in the middle instead of pirates themselves. You can show your support against this bill by contacting your state represenative from here: http://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml