Well here we are in 2012, and I guess it was bound to happen. The freedom of the Internet is under attack by those who, under the guise of copyright protection and free enterprise are trying to censor and silence millions of voices. Now I am not going to argue that copyright and piracy doesn’t exist, or that it doesn’t hurt the bottom line of artists and performers, but its ability to allow those same artists to reach a larger audience, to post their music, publish their own books, and interact directly with fans exceeds any perceived damage. Can you imagine if the FBI would have shown up at your front door for making your boyfriend/girlfriend a mixed tape? SOPA and PIPA take the desire to protect copyright to a level that would change the very nature of who we have become as a society and how we interact with each other.

Some educators may say, great, students finally have to go back to the library and look thing up instead of going to Wikipedia. But in a world where eLearning and virtual schools are popular one could even get in trouble for a student posting “inappropriate” material. No longer is it the prevue of the teacher to ensure no copyright infringement or plagiarism occurs, but the entire school could be sued by the US government and their website taken down. Imagine no more YouTube, no more social networking, no aggregating content, no mashups, the Web of 2.0 would in effect be over. Except of course, that even if they block the website domain, you will still be able to navigate to the site if you have the IP address. So what exactly is the point?

Now some may say that if you aren’t breaking the law you have nothing to fear. Well first, the law is so vague and all encompassing it would be difficult to know if you were. Second have you ever had to defend yourself again corporate America? Even if you have done nothing wrong, simply the fear of lawsuit will hinder creativity, limit free speech, and drive millions to simply find new ways around it, doing nothing to actually address the problem.

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