Congress attempts to push legislation through despite public outcry
When you went to Google Wednesday, you may have done a double take at the design. It was a black censorship strip covering the usually colorful Google logo. Known for their creative designs that give credit to famous people, places or events, Google’s latest one may turn out to be just as famous.
Google’s design, along with Wikipedia’s 24 hour blackout, was in response to the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011,” also known as the “Protect IP Act of 2011,” or more simply put, “PIPA.”
This is a bill proposed to the Senate, mainly from the entertainment industry, to curb illegal downloads of popular songs, movies and TV shows that can be found with the click of a search button.
As technology grows, so does the Internet. Since it’s available on mediums like tablets, iPhones and laptops, downloads of songs, apps and movies can be had free of charge in seconds.
Private corporations are looking to make a law that can shut down these third party sites giving away movies and songs for free.
The bill would let them do this by blocking access to the infringing sites, even letting them sue search engines and blogs supporting them, and this begs the question: Doesn’t America have enough unneeded lawsuits as it is?
The corporations doing this would be able to shut down the domain, but not the IP address. So by typing in the IP address, you could still access all the information, making this bill ring of the same idiocy as when your high school tried blocking Facebook.
The other way PIPA would shut down these domains, usually those from foreign countries, would be cutting off the U.S. advertising on the sites. This is often the source of revenue for sites based on giving away downloads, like Napster, Limewire, or the multitudes of torrent sites.
The judicial part of the bill would be put in the hands of U.S. judges, often from older generations who may not have all the technological knowledge to discern between a pirating site and a start-up hoping to become the next YouTube or Facebook.
Under this bill, these social networking sites would have to begin censoring as well, making it harder for users to post things with copyrights or corporate backings, highly censoring what was once a free domain.
The bill is being strongly considered, just so the entertainment industry can make more money on a few movies or songs, but it may result in one of the biggest acts of censorship in a new digital age.
You can contact your local representatives easily through any number of websites against the bill with simply your name, e-mail and zip code, to show your dissatisfaction with PIPA.
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