FOI

"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." - Pres. Harry Truman

SOPA/PIPA. From WIKI's description of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a United States bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. & The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA) is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing on counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S.

This issue has really has taken its toll these previous week, as an ardent web enthusiast scouring the search engines for free torrents & links are pretty much tedious nowadays. Since there are lots of links that are mostly blocked or removed due to violation of terms & services - better yet for piracy or infringement, aside from bogus links which where the problem before if you don't know their hookups. Piracy, can the American government really stop it by using their SOPA & PIPA? Further analysis from recent blogs indicate that they can and they will but the prohibition includes only within their territory. Overseas sites like Pirate Bay & MegaUpload can still be accessed though since they aren't covered within the prohibition. So whats the use of it? Picture it this way when SOPA/PIPA is passed, this will be the result when you google search :

                              

Now what could be worse than this?? Cyber-world controlled by media outlets and their respective lobbies. As such, letting people have a glimpse of SOPA/PIPA's underlying prohibition is a must since cyber-world is more on freedom of information. Imagine going back to the 50's to the 80's where there is no Internet, no facebook, twitter, wiki, google, free ebooks  (now what would be the use of kindle, nook & e-readers).  By taking part of the anti-SOPA & PIPA campaign we can still stop this from happening. Let Digital age rule as it is because there is also worry that SOPA and PIPA could be abused and lead to censorship for purposes other than the entertainment industries intellectual property protection.