Comp Rant on SOPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA, was recently introduced to United
States Congress to the support of movie studios. The bill states that copyright-infringing
websites will be practically erased from the internet by the government by just placing
the DNS on a blacklist.


Though the bill is supported by many, can it actually destroy the internet? 

When SOPA was introduced into Congress, websites like Facebook, Google, Tumblr, and 4chan were already against it. Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, and 4chan users sometimes post infringing items, such as meme image macros, movies, etc.

Can the government really punish websites for their users' actions?

The posting of infringing items is usually against a website’s terms of service so the website should already take action on their own users. YouTube even has a STRICT copyright infringement policy.

SOPA claims to terminate anything that is copyright infringing, but what about Fair Use? Will SOPA mean that the government will forget about their own laws? 

YouTube has a lot of copyrighted content on it but a big portion of it is used under fair use by non-partnered accounts and used under commercial permission by partnered accounts. A lot of image macros on the internet are made under fair use and are frequently posted on 4chan and other websites, since they are most of the time used for nonprofit purposes.

Does the government plan on completely taking down mega companies, like Google? 

Google does realize that they are targeted by SOPA, since they indirectly help distribute copyright-infringing material. SOPA’s main target is foreign pirate sites, which Google has queried, but with other American pirating websites that are also queried on Google, Google’s search database could shrink drastically. SOPA
could even terminate Google entirely, meaning that Google, Gmail, YouTube, Android, Google Docs, Google+, Google Docs, and other Google products could kiss the internet goodbye. Google warned lawmakers that SOPA would depress investment, which would later lead to more economic trouble for the U.S. Government. The bill has become such a popular topic that an entire day was dedicated by http://americancensorship.org/ to stopping internet censorship in which Mozilla, Tumlr, 4chan, Boing Boing, and California House Representative Zoe Lofgren participated in.

I don't live in the United States but will I still be targeted?


Unfortunately, YES! The U.S. Government plans to team up with international governments to enforce SOPA.

I watched JeepersMedia's video about SOPA and a lot of that stuff seemed interesting. Was that all true?


Surprisingly, yes. You would normally think of CBS as that TV network with those funny programs but they are actually a corporate powerhouse. CNET IS owned by CBS and back then, you would have found a crap load of links to P2P and file sharing software. The only problem with his video is that still thought CBS was part of the same company as Viacom. CBS separated from Viacom in 2005; however, they still communicate since CBS still owns some of the rights to Viacom's classic programming, which is why you're not going to get   a Nickelodeon Rewind network anytime soon.

Here's the video in case you haven't watched it yet.







On the plus side, copyright infringement would most likely increase dramatically due to SOPA, but would it be worth the trouble? However, overall, SOPA would figuratively kill us all. Popular fanbases, such as the bronies, weeaboos, etc., would pretty much die out which would NOT be good for business.