Did you happen to notice yesterday several websites were "down". Google's logo was blacked out, Wikipedia would let you search, but then quickly turned to a blocked page.
What these two websites and many others were doing was protesting SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) - this is a bill that if made a law, would give the U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders ability to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.
The original proposal would allow the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from conducting business with the "allegedly" infringing websites. It would also bar search engines from linking to such sites, and further require internet service providers to block access. The bill would grant immunity to internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement.
If this bill is passed to censor the internet it would be a direct violation of the First Amendment. This would highly effect user-friendly sites such as YouTube, Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo. This would also mean legislation would enable law enforcement to take down an entire domain (such as blogspot) due to something posted on ONE single blog.
How does that sound?? Punishing an ENTIRE community for 1 minority?? Nonsense.......seriously what is our country coming to?
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