The perfect blend of good food, good books, and whatever else I toss in.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Fight against censorship

I was going to post another recipe, but I think in honor of the effort to stop PIPA and SOPA from passing in Congress, I will post the link to Google's page allowing supporters of stopping the initiatives to sign the petition: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/. Please consider adding your name. These two initiatives seriously threaten Internet freedom and open access. While I don't know that they would be job-killers as many critics of PIPA and SOPA claim, I do think that they would open a dangerous door of censorship that would be hard to control, let alone close. The US Government would have the ability to block access to websites; I envision websites being blocked with vague explanations, or false or faulty reasoning (our government doesn't exactly have the best record for transparency). Many other countries worldwide block websites for one reason or another (France and Germany, I was amazed to find out, blocks websites with content related to Nazism and Holocaust denial).[1] China is an often-named example of serious censorship, but others include Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, and Syria (check the Enemies of the Internet list).

And I do agree with critics that say these bills will not help stop piracy. Those that illegally share or counterfeit media or other items will buy other domain names and continuously move their activity to other websites, which is no solution. The US government will be endlessly chasing after them. This is a poor attempt to create a stop gap measure. While Congress's intentions are good (stop piracy), the execution needs a lot more work, and much more consideration of the ensuing ramifications.

[1] Wikipedia. (2012, January 16). Internet censorship. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship

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