Protestors halt SOPA/PIPA, but for how long?

Perhaps last week you noticed that almost every website you visited was “blacked out.” This was because these websites were showing their dissent with the Stop Online Piracy Act, known as SOPA, and the PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) also known as PIPA which were trying to be passed through Congress last week. Both are intended to curtail online piracy.

At first glance, this makes sense. Copyright laws aren’t a bad thing. Piracy is not exactly something that is moral. However, both SOPA and PIPA would give Congress the power to shut down any website without review.

Not to mention that in this age, many people under the age of 30 have posted a photo on Facebook, put a song on their blog, or done some parody on YouTube. Is everyone under 30 going to end up in jail then? That doesn’t seem like such a great idea.

These bills are an obvious infringement on our right to free speech. Who doesn’t have a blog these days where they want to share some great image? Under SOPA, Tumblr, Blogger or WordPress could be shut down for not keeping track of those images.

Many individual YouTube videos are removed today at the request of copyright holders for including clips of music or movies. Under SOPA/PIPA half of YouTube could disappear without notice.

The Internet is a huge, creative tool and both bills would put a damper on the creativity that the Internet has inspired. Websites would automatically censor themselves, stifling the explosion of creativity the open Internet has allowed.

The censorship that SOPA/PIPA would bring about is also an infringement on our freedom of speech. People should be able to write, post, or link to whatever they want on the Internet. If the Internet becomes censored, what’s next?

Though neither SOPA nor PIPA was approved in Congress (both will remain on hiatus until support can be rebuilt), some form of censorship on the Internet seems inevitable.

The online petitions and blacked-out websites seem to have worked for now. Hopefully, people will continue to show they value freedom of speech on the Internet.