SOPA, or the “Stop Online Piracy Act” and its sibling the Protect IP Act are pieces of legislation being considered by the US Congress. They sound like a good idea — after all, who doesn’t want to protect intellectual property and stop piracy, right?
Unfortunately, if either (or both) get passed they will drastically change the internet as we know it — and not for the better. Unless you spend a lot of time online you probably haven’t heard of either. Why? The same companies pushing for SOPA own the mainstream media.
Without going into the details about SOPA here, but let me sum it up:
if you post a video of your kid dancing to Michael Jackson‘s Thriller to YouTube, under the proposed provisions in SOPA, you’d go to jail for 5 years — that’s one more year than the guy who killed him.
Enough said?
Companies that support SOPA support a law that wants to put you in jail for violating a website’s EULA or TOS — even though they change frequently and are agreements — not laws! Some are calling for boycotts of companies that support SOPA.
But what companies support SOPA?
Head over to my article at pocketnow.com to see a very novel idea!
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