Yup, it's back again! You know it, you broke it, you love to loathe it, the hateful bill that would have shut sites such as youtube, facebook, and even our beloved deviantart, has arisen from the ashes ONCE AGAIN to infringe on our basic human rights in the hopes of giving government officials and overbearingly huge corporations even more money than they already have. I'm talking of course about the malevolent Stop Online Piracy Act, or as I like to call it, the Stop Online Privileges Act.
You may have heard of it from way back in 2012. Well how could you not? Big sites like Wikipedia, Google, and Youtube participated in a 24-hour blackout in protest of the bill. If it was passed, it would have censored huge parts of the Internet and made lawsuits and arrests about as common as coming across what everybody's dog left behind during a daily walk. However, thanks to the combined efforts of popular websites and basically every Internet user in THE WORLD, the bill never got passed and faded into obscurity...
Well, sort of.
You see, SOPA never really went away. Since 2012, a bill in some shape or form made to restrict online liberties with the vague goal of cracking down on online piracy has been proposed to Congress time and again, each one with a different name and different words, but ultimately the same goal with slightly differing methods. Such aliases for this bill were SOPA, PIPA (Protect IP Act), CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act), and possibly countless others that sneaked their way into consideration without us knowing! Now once again, SOPA is trying to return "for real" this time, only with a couple of revisions, or rather, "additions" to it's already draconian policies.
These additions would allow the government to make the streaming of any sort of copyrighted material a felony, and the uploader and artists who made the video will get sentenced for FIVE YEARS in prison. That's right, your favorite youtubers that you've subscribed to would be liable to become inmates with rapists, serial killers, and terrorists. You know, people who actually did real harm to people and the world!!
But this doesn't apply just to videos! Oh no, the same goes to people who've written fan fiction, sang a cover of their favorite song, and even drawn FAN ART! That's right people. You, me, everyone on Deviantart, we're ALL in danger of being arrested! And for what!? Expressing our love for things that we already spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on!? Oh yeah, that's a real crime alright, lock me up!
And seems not even celebrity artists are safe from this monstrosity. Under the laws proposed by SOPA, Justin Bieber would be thrown in federal prison for five years just because he posted videos of him singing his favorite Michael Jackson songs on Youtube. Yes, Justin Bieber would be locked up for half a decade, and not for the reasons that you would probably be hoping for (personally, I don't hold any hate for the guy, but back to the topic!).
So with overly paranoid censorship laws, ridiculous definitions of copyright violations, and extremely steep super-harsh penalties for the most common of Internet activities, you've gotta be wondering: Just WHO exactly does this benefit anyway!? The answer would be Hollywood, record industries, and pretty much every huge corporation that tries to make money off of you (Coca Cola, McDonalds, Nintendo, etc.). This ensures that they have DIRECT CONTROL over the distribution of their content and what you see, hear, and pretty much have access to. It's like they tie strings to you, throw you in a maze, post a bunch of signs telling you where to go, close off every sort of path that leads to something other than their product, and attach a shock collar to your neck that zaps you anytime you even think about doing anything else. You've heard about those conspiracy theories about microchips attached to our brains that fill our heads with advertisements? Well, basically call this Step 1 in that process!!
Jokes aside though, it seems that this is yet another case of big businesses having a firm hold on government, which makes the idea that the Obama Administration is even considering this even more disappointing. In 2012, President Obama said himself that he was against SOPA and thought that it was unconstitutional, but now that the election is over and there's no further terms in the future, he's practically caving in to peer pressure from the big kids! Now I like Obama. So far he's my most favorite president yet, seeing as how I didn't live before the Bush era. But when I see weak moments like this from one of the most powerful people on the planet, I've suddenly realized how terrible of a job being President is. I really hope that he does something right and does everything in his legal power to keep this bill from passing, but only time will tell.
So now that this has been addressed, I just want to say that if we don't do something now, the Internet, and possibly the World as we know it, will never be the same again, and NOT for the better! If SOPA wins, we all lose! People like the Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Video Game Nerd will be arrested for streaming content, fan artists like Jitterbug Jive will be convicted for creating work based off of (sorry, "stolen from") not one but two copyrighted sources, and fan fiction writers will be punished for writing what they want to happen in the stories of their favorite book or movie! Not to mention, all of those like myself who haven't uploaded anything onto Youtube yet will be entering a risky business once we do. We would be dooming an entire generation after us if we let this happen. You, your brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, children, and everyone in the world past and present should be allowed to express themselves anywhere they go, even and especially on the Internet!
So if you want to make a difference and STOP SOPA FROM EVER BECOMING A REALITY, sign the petition in the link below. It will require you to make an account, but it's honestly worth signing this petition and never coming back again, unless something even more important comes up. It needs at least 100,000 signatures in order to get a response from the White House and it might have already reached that quota by now, but getting MORE SIGNATURES WILL DEFINITELY HELP! Please don't let posting videos of kittens reenacting Star Wars become illegal. That's just cruel.
Also, if you want more info on SOPA and it's EVIL, search "SOPA 2013" on Youtube and click on most of the videos on the first page, the ones on the top are really choice!
To quote one of my most cheesy childhood heroes, "THE POWER IS YOURS." So let's prove our power and save the Internet!!
Updated: Forgot to mention this (it's the reason of the title). What REALLY bugs me about this is that the people trying to get this bill to pass were trying to propose it without anyone noticing. They were counting on us all being so distracted by all the things in the world, such as the economy, the Travon Martin case, Obamacare (for like the billionth time!!),...the Royal Baby, so that they could get this passed before we could even notice! Man, they must really have no clue how the Internet works after all.
Anyway, now that the petition has reached it's goal, I'm hoping that in the next coming weeks/months, we'll finally see some news coverage and Obama will finally reveal his actual stance on the bill. I need some answers darn it!