Internet browsers who tried getting on Wikipedia, Reddit or Google on Jan. 19 were met with a big surprise. All of the websites were blacked out. In other words, users couldn’t look at the content without hacking in and getting rid of the giant black screens that covered everything.
This was a protest for what sounds like a great idea, but isn’t. That idea was SOPA.
With the introduction of SOPA to Congress, every pirate’s fears are coming true. SOPA, which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, was created to get rid of the large number of illegally downloaded music and movies on the Internet. That sounds like a very good idea, but when one actually looks at the bill, it’s basically a blank check to the government.
Sure, it gets rid of illegal movies and music, but it also means we might not be able to use pictures of SpongeBob for our funny Internet pictures anymore. That’s why the majority of people who heard about SOPA were furious. It gets rid of some of the freedom that people have on the Internet. Many of the things on YouTube could cease to exist because people who make movies on YouTube often use copyrighted music or movie clips or even just stills from a movie or TV show.
A famous collection of websites known as memebase.com almost solely uses stills and quotes from movies or television shows to mock pop-culture. For a few days, every picture or video was pertaining to SOPA, and all of them made the point of putting a black bar over the punch line of their well-known memes.
If SOPA scares us, ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), a global version of SOPA, appears to be much more extensive. ACTA would create a new governing body that’s sole purpose is to crack down on piracy of any copyrighted material taken off the Internet, and prosecute the people who put it up for the world to see and download.
SOPA was eventually shot down, with the belief among Internet users that it will be brought back eventually, but ACTA is still going strong, thankfully getting rid of pirated material, but scaring Internet users into thinking it will destroy the rest of the freedom on the Internet.
The righteous indignation of authority shutting down piracy freedom seems a bit skewed. If ACTA sounds like a problem, think about what has caused it to come about. Perhaps Internet users should rethink buying pirated materials and stealing others’ work for their own projects. Piracy is just what it was hundreds of years ago…people stealing from honest, hard-working people. How hard authority has to come down on these pirates is totally up to them, but with them go all the recreational pirates as well.