What dreaded words!
It’s an interesting day in the online world. It’s gone black. At least part of it has.
For the first time in its over ten-year history, Wikipedia is unavailable today. It’s joined by several of the blogs I read daily as well as WordPress and other reference sites I use all the time. Their blackout is to protest pending legislation in the House of Representatives and Senate: Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).
As is often the case, the intent behind the legislation is good. It’s just poorly drafted. It’s meant to stop copyright infringement which is a good thing. If When I publish a book, I don’t want someone stealing my words. However, the way the bills are written could cause serious damage to the free and open Internet, according to Wikipedia, a free online dictionary. It goes on to explain:
“SOPA and PIPA are badly drafted legislation that won’t be effective at their stated goal (to stop copyright infringement), and will cause serious damage to the free and open Internet. They put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn’t being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won’t show up in major search engines. And, SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.”
In a nutshell, this legislation is more about control than about piracy.
Do I really think, if these bills pass, I’ll have to go back to looking up words in a heavy dictionary and trekking to the library to do research? No. Well, no more than I do now. But I don’t want to make things more difficult for these sites and I sure don’t want to make it more difficult to maintain my website. I’m about as apolitical as they come, so I seldom jump on the bandwagon. But is important to my industry. I have to speak out and tell readers how they can contact their congressmen to express your opinions.
My friend, Cat Woods, did a thought provoking blog on the topic this morning. Check it out.
To learn more visit American Censorship.
Many thanks.
~ Kay
