Would American Forefather's Be Proud Of SOPA?

A few weeks ago, SOPA, the stop online piracy act exploded onto the Internet in the form of protests. Average people going on websites would find a black screen with a SOPA emblem explaining what the act actually is and why that specific website is blocked from view. The SOPA was passed in legislation to stop the trafficking of intellectual property and counterfeit goods. With the Internet having essentially no rules or regulations regarding what is traded and viewed online. Massive Internet shopping websites are what we think is Internet trading, but in reality there are millions of other websites that illegally traffic goods all over the world. 

The outrage over the SOPA act was most notable on Wikipedia. Personally, I use Wikipedia for almost everything, which is a little embarrassing to admit but it’s a wealth of information at my fingertips. On January 18, 2012 websites like Wikipedia blacked out their entire pages for the day. SOPA essentially wipes out the freedom of speech for bloggers like me. So if you like free speech, and student blogs, protest the SOPA act. Over 160 million people allegedly viewed Wikipedia’s homepage, and Google had organized protests and boycotts in New York City. 

This act is going to become a serious threat to search engines like Google. Domain names to internet websites will now be blocked off and the information that is flowing through powerful search engines like Google will slowly but surely be bled dry until there is no current information free flowing at all. I mean think about it, how do you find the answer to your questions? Google. How do you find out where you are? Google maps. How do you find an image of someone using only a few vague words? Google. This is what’s at stake, the ease of finding information is going to be completely erased and us as students are going to be forced to look things up in encyclopedias! 

That’s an exaggeration, but it is ironic that this SOPA act drawn up by the American Government is directly violating one of the core constitutional amendments: the right to freedom of speech. In my opinion, we are starting to limit what other people are saying just because the Internet is the modern equivalent to the Wild West. If there were just some small rules or more secure networks in place to regulate certain sites that this stolen intellectual property and trafficking of goods will probably cease to exist. Instead of trying to black out the entire Internet, legislation should focus on the small things rather than spoiling the wonderful invention of the Internet for everyone. 

To be honest, I don’t think the SOPA act will stick; I think it is one of those passing legislations that are there as a scare tactic rather than something that will actually solve issues of the Internet. Instead of everyone becoming paranoid of ‘big brother’ blacking out their favorite Internet sites, they should be concentrating harder on their everyday lives.