Our illustrious congress is currently considering legislation that would allow the US Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to block websites that "violate copyright". There are two pieces of legislation under consideration: SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), and PIPA, (Protect Intellectual Property Act). SOPA gives copyright holders and the government the right to block any site they deemed to be "violating copyright"; PIPA would give them additional staff and funding for their efforts.
Sites that are deemed to violate copyright may be blocked, blacked out, and removed from search engines. Site owners would be required to police their sites for copyright violation -- just imagine this burden falling on Wikipedia or Facebook! Even your internet service provider would be forced to become involved: they will be required to block these sites.
Under the guise of protecting intellectual property and copyright, this legislation would inhibit free speech, the free flow of information, and our general cultural discourse. Think I'm being overly dramatic? We live in a world where the copyright to the song ""Happy Birthday" were acquired by AOL TimeWarner in 1998" were acquired by AOL TimeWarner in 1998. This is why the TV show Futurama sang their own version of "Happy Birthday" -- they would have had to pay for the rights otherwise. Seriously. The rights to Happy Effing Birthday.
Anyone who publishes anything on the web should be very, very concerned. Hell, anyone who surfs the web should be concerned. What would happen to this site if the makers of lamictal decided I was using their copyrighted drug's name without permission?
To bring attention to this issue, WIkipedia is blacked out today. The only articles you can read are the ones about SOPA and PIPA. However, if you trundle on over to their site, they will tell you how to contact your legislators to ask them to vote against SOPA and PIPA.
No comments:
Post a Comment
What are your thoughts? Talk amongst yourselves!