Uploaded by zeroslashj on 14 Jan 2012 - Hello, my fellow Americans. As you may or may not be aware of, Congress is in the process of passing a bill known as SOPA, or Stop Online Piracy Act. And as you may or may not be aware of, SOPA places severe limitations on the Internet and therefore you.
The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.
The keyword here is accused, not guilty. This means that if a company accuses a website of online infringement, the government can shut down that website without due process. This goes against the Fifth Amendment. The only thing this bill will do is to cripple the Internet and prevent free speech. Something the United States was founded upon.
Internet censorship cannot work. The Internet was designed by the government during the Cold War to survive if a nuclear attack were to commence. In other words, even if the bill is passed, little will be affected by experienced users, but the common citizen will. Not only will it be illegal to post home videos of your kids while copyrighted music is playing in the background, but it will cost you 47 million dollars in taxpayer dollars over the next five years. 47 million dollars. Do you have that kind of money?
SOPA was only introduced as a way for the entertainment industry to earn even more money. Have you noticed how mainstream and hyped films, music, and video games have significantly decreased in quality? Because the industry prefers to stay on the safe side and produce films that are easy to make and sell, they are confident that passing an anti-piracy bill will secure their financial success. Little do they know that piracy has existed since before the dawn of the Internet and even before electronic technology. The Internet did not create such an idea.
If your Congress representative supports SOPA, do not support them. If you feel like this will not affect you, it will. You already have too many bills to pay; why pile another one on?
On January 18, 2012, high profile bodies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, Reddit, Mozilla, LinkedIn, IAC, Ebay, Paypal, Wordpress and Wikimedia may shut down their websites in protest against the passing of this bill. This will give you a taste of what is to come if SOPA is passed. And further protests from Anonymous will arrive if this bill is passed in the form of Operation Blackout. You can trust that Anonymous will deliver a storm unlike the world has ever truly seen since the American Revolution, that in turn sparked revolutions across the world.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
You should have expected us.
