Stop SOPA

I'm going to be serious for a moment. Please read this!

Our congress is currently working on legislation with the potential to heavily censor the Internet. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US House of Representatives and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP) in the Senate are serious, by-partisan threats to our first amendment rights! Sorry to be such a downer, but I feel strongly that this topic needs more attention. Informed citizens can still make a difference, for the time being. SOPA in particular has the potential to change the Internet as we know it by allowing the blocking of any web site in which copy-righted material is being streamed without proper authority. This would include, but is not limited to, YouTube and Reddit; Facebook is another potential target.

I’ve been following the progress on these bills for sometime now. A recent article by Mythbuster Adam Savage does a much better job of explained the bill and how it relates to the Internet than I can. SOPA is built around the idea that an individual can report copy-right infringements on a give web site and in turn that web site will be blocked with little to no oversight and WITHOUT a court order. The site will be blocked on DNS level so it will be very hard and very illegal to work around the block. Put SOPA together with the NDAA bill that was signed into law on December 31, and you’re looking at a full on 1984 style crack down. Imagine being deemed a terrorist and arrested and held indefinitely because you are trying to get to blocked YouTube videos of Celebrity Jeopardy. Seriously. This censorship cannot be allowed to get to the President's desk for signature. With the New Year, congress will come back into session and pick these laws back up. It is vital we, as citizens of the USA and of the Internet contact them and let them know how terrible these bills are. Here is a web site that has all contact information (phone, email, snail mail) for any elected official you may want to contact.

I think it is also important to point out that these bills are by-partisan. Not much of that going around these days. So what is the root cause of this so rare across the isle support for such a bill? Money, influence and power. Here is a site that links the money given by music and movie companies to our Representatives and Senators for the support of the bills in question. I’m not stupid; I know this kind of thing goes on all the time in Washington, but that doesn’t make it right. Last time I checked they (congressmen and women) all still make over 100k a year under the guise of representing the tax payers.

I am not pro-piracy. I do believe people should pay for music and movies and such. But this legislation is bad. Like so many other things our congress does, their intentions may be in the right place, but they fail to see the unintended consequences. Please take the time to understand this legislation, form your own opinion and take action. Knowing is half the battle.

MLK Day

Let me start by saying, I have made fun of a lot of people for many different reasons. Gender, race, sex, weight, height, home town, current residence, mental disability, physically disability, religion, sandwich preference, drug addiction, sexual orientation, favorite sports teams, looking at me funny, political persuasion, noobs, intelligence, education; the list could go on but I thought I’d cover the basics. I tell you this because it is important to understand no one is perfect and everyone is capable of hurting someone. I won’t defend myself for any of these things, nor will I promise never to make comments on these groups again. I try to be fair and only make fun of people when they are obviously not speaking for the sum of their constituency. Every group has that one idiot that makes all the stereotypes true.

Is there a point here? I don’t confess to be any kind of activist or political person. I’m not really out there pushing for the rights of any one people. But more than forty years after his death (Martin Luther King), people still walk into my office and start making jokes about him. They take issue with our office being closed on Monday, the official celebration of the holiday. I think as a whole our society has moved closer to ending this kind of rhetoric, yet there are still pockets of the population stuck in time. I can’t say anything, mainly because I’m not paid to interject; I’m paid to smile and nod, but also because I don’t have the nerve to correct these people. I think that’s part of the problem too. If I had the nerves to say something to these people, would it matter? Would my words make a difference?

Sorry to be such a downer, but the purpose of these days: Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day etc. is to remind us of something, to implore us to pause and think about these issues. I really believe that and try to take time on these holidays to contemplate their meaning. I hope I've made a good case for you to do the same.