CENSORED

I think it's time I give you an informal education about some things that could very well threaten our online lives from here on out... if we don't do anything about it.

Main headlines for today, I'd say. Screw sports and stupid celebrities - this is important.
(Obviously, I didn't make this image.)

Serious mode on.





CURRENT MUSIC:
Saki Haruyama, Yoshihiko Kitamura, and Yoshito Hirano - "Follow Me!"
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

As I've been playing a serious amount of Sacred Stones lately, it would make sense for me to be listening to the game's soundtrack.

Despite being played only once in the early parts game, the track is amazing in how well it captures the tones it needs to play. As Prince Ephraim leads a seemingly foolhardy charge against a well-fortified enemy-occupied stronghold, "Follow Me!" becomes a sort-of triumphant anthem - not just for the spear-wielding prince, but for courage and valor as well. (Which is a good thing, because four against God-knows-how-many in a fortress that belongs to an enemy in a peninsula that's about to be surrounded by the enemy does seem quite foolhardy to begin with.)

Somehow, it fits today's overall mood. As I want people to rally under me as both viewers and supporters, it's an appropriate piece. To think that mere sounds from a Game Boy Advance (or in my case: a 3DS) could register on an aural scale this well...?





Ladies and gentlemen: it's time to get politically opinionated!





As a philomath, I strive to learn about new things for the sake of learning about new things. The quality and content of what I learn can (and most definitely will) vary, but in the end, I still get the pleasure of discovering something that is new to me. As such, the Internet is a very resourceful tool for people like me, who end up being fascinated with link after link that we come across.

Of course, when you put philomaths and the Internet together, a few websites come to mind. One of the big ones? Wikipedia. But as I began typing the original draft of today's entry (which, between you and me, had nothing to do with today's now-revised subject), I came across this:

Bold move, Wikipedia. Bold move.

So I decided to go read some other things. I tried going on Reddit, and I found this:

Huh. Guess I'll have to get my news somewhere else today.

Then I tried to Google the problem, and I found that they've been censored.

Not really. They're just proving a point.

To most people, this may seem inconvenient, but to me, I felt myself smile inside, because I knew what was going on. I decided that instead of rambling on about silly things, I'd inform the people who somehow find my life interesting and come here because of that the stalkers with nothing better to do than read this online journal blog-of-sorts about the reasons behind their blackouts. It's part of an online protest to stop two bills from being approved by Congress: H.R. 3261 and S. 968.



H.R. 3261 - known as the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (or SOPA) - is a bill currently on the floor of the United States House of Representatives that intends "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes."

S. 968 - known as the "Protect Intellectual Property Act" (or PIPA) - is a sister bill to SOPA that is currently on the floor of the United States Senate. PIPA's intention can be seen in its full name: "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011."



And we thought S. 978 was a bad piece of legislature...

Can't read the text? Google's offering a .PDF of this image here.

Initially, the proposed bills look as if they're trying to combat online piracy and circumvent other illegal online activities. This would seem like a good thing, but when you start reading all the text and its legal interpretations, you begin to realize things. You begin to realize things that millions of Internet users (myself included) have realized.



1.) SOPA and PIPA are way too open-ended with their wording.
Indeed they are. The way these bills are worded mean that while people maliciously using the Internet can be prosecuted, average people like you and be can be tried just as easily for simply talking about copyrighted content on the web. For instance, say I were to post this image snapshot from the Pixar movie Monsters, Inc. on my blog... like so.

One of my friends says that the little blue monster kid in this scene looks like me. o.O

Now, let's pretend that I made no attempt to say that the photo wasn't mine. Let's also pretend that my sloppy-yet-reasonable "obligatory copyright statement" at the very bottom of my blog wasn't there as well. Under normal circumstances, if Pixar wanted me to remove the image, all they'd have to do is send me a cease-and-desist request and I'd take it down - no harm done, because after all, I didn't give credit.

Now, if SOPA and PIPA were to become law, Pixar (if they wanted to) could very well take legal action against me instead, skipping the cease-and-desist part and going straight for the kill instead. If they were outright pissed, they could even ask the United States government (which I need to remind you consists of people who have no knowledge of how the Internet works) to put my blog on an Internet blacklist of sorts, make websites such as Google delete any and all links to my blog, and even have it deleted from the Internet. And after all that is done, I could be prosecuted and put into prison if Uncle Sam felt like the country needed one less free Filipino.

"Harsh and arbitrary sanctions without due process," indeed.

Sounds ludicrous? Oh, think again. Recently, photographer DJ Schulte found that a photo he took was used on a website without any indication of giving him credit. He stated:

"I switched my images from traditional copyright protection to be protected under the Creative Commons license a few years ago, which simply states that they can use my images as long as they attribute the image to me and do not use it for commercial purposes.

"I do not see anywhere on the screen capture that you have provided that the image was attributed to the source (me). So my conclusion would be that [the website] did improperly use my image. So according to the SOPA bill, should it pass, maybe I could petition the court to take action..."

"An explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation" - according to nine Democrats (and Ron Paul), this is what would happen if SOPA and PIPA were to go live. They also stated that "SOPA's overly broad language, in its current form, would target legitimate domestic websites, creating significant uncertainty for those in the technology and venture capital industries."

Yes, this means that all those popular videos on YouTube could be removed, leaving it barren with only unoriginal crap that we never watch (and Epic Meal Time) And while proponents of these bills state that user-content sites such as YouTube and Facebook would be relatively unaffected... we know better. I mean, if the above two scenarios were to be possible under SOPA, imagine what would happen if I made a fifteen-minute video blog that had a ten-second clip of The Matrix that I used to illustrate a point...


2.) SOPA and PIPA are violations of the American First Amendment and also damage the dreams of all the future investors the Internet could see in its existence.
Scholars who are well-versed in the First Amendment have stated that putting SOPA and PIPA into law would censor so many people and websites. The Wikimedia Foundation has stated that "If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States."

Say I were to post a satirical entry that stated "[INSERT PERSON/ORGANIZATION OF YOUR CHOICE HERE] is/are (an) idiot(s)" and I spent a good half-hour typing my valid reasons why I thought that [INSERT PERSON/ORGANIZATION OF YOUR CHOICE HERE] is/are (an) idiot(s). As stated above, SOPA and PIPA are so loosely-worded that legal actions could be taken over the most trivial of issues. So, if [INSERT PERSON/ORGANIZATION OF YOUR CHOICE HERE] were to get offended over me calling them an idiot, they could have the government force me to take it down.

This sounds like the example I used with Monsters, Inc., but unlike the issue of me using copyrighted material without giving credit, SOPA and PIPA empowers people even more than it should. [INSERT PERSON/ORGANIZATION OF YOUR CHOICE HERE] can now take action and have my satirical piece censored or removed from the Internet... which, last I checked, is a violation of the First Amendment.

When U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) placed a Senate hold on PIPA back in May 2011, he said the following:

"I understand and agree with the goal of the legislation - to protect intellectual property and combat commerce in counterfeit goods - but I am not willing to muzzle speech and stifle innovation and economic growth to achieve this objective. At the expense of legitimate commerce, PIPA’s prescription takes an overreaching approach to policing the Internet when a more balanced and targeted approach would be more effective. The collateral damage of this approach is speech, innovation and the very integrity of the Internet."

Confused about how SOPA and PIPA would affect these "future investors of the Internet?" Well, say you wanted to start a business with selling custom-made flasks to people across the nation. Obviously, this would mean that for maximum effectiveness, you'd want to go online. Right now, you could do that with little worry, but if these bills were to be online, you'd have to worry about someone claiming that your products and website (your whole business, really) wasn't original. Thus, you'd need legal support, but since you're barely starting out, you can't afford the services. As such, you'd probably back out of the venture because some mook out there doesn't like you and has SOPA in their pockets.

Derek Parham, a Silicon Valley investor, made the point even simpler to understand:

"What used to be two guys in a garage coming up with an idea and starting a company is now going to be two guys in a garage with four lawyers behind them - and that's not how the Valley really got started. People shouldn't be fearful of getting sued out of oblivion when they go create a new idea."

So, censorship over minutiae and idea-hampering? Way to ruin the American Dream, fellas.


3.) Look who supports SOPA and PIPA and see if you get as disgusted as I did.
The various organizations that initially spearheaded support for these bills - such as the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and Viacom - don't really surprise me. After all, their first business priority is (supposedly) defending the copyrights out there (albeit in a corrupt and money-grubbing manner).

When other companies and organizations began displaying their support - such as NBC Universal, Pfizer, Nike, L'Oreal, the Ford Motor Company, Revlon, and the National Basketball Association - this started becoming more than just people trying to circumvent online piracy. Now it's become a financial bloodbath, with all the big shots ganging up on anyone who threatens or "threatens" their financial security. (Oh, look! In addition to their crappy, gas-guzzling vehicles, I have a newer reason to hate Ford!)

Interesting tidbit: wondering who's against SOPA and PIPA? Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, eBay, the Mozilla Corporation, Reddit, Kaspersky Lab, the Wikimedia Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU, and Human Rights Watch. Essentially, this could be seen as "Big Corporations vs The Internet" - and since the politicians have these big corporations in their pockets, it can also be seen as heavily one-sided.



My take on all this? The people and organizations supporting these two atrocious bills are doing so for one or more of the following reasons:

1. They're more interested in preserving their own financial investments first. They're probably thinking, "Do whatever you want so long as I get my money."
   
   • (This can be further boiled down to them translating "copyright protection" as "money-making opportunities." How sickening.)
2. They're using SOPA and PIPA as a public attention booster shot and actually know very little about the ramifications and repercussions that'll show up if such bills became law.
3. They're idiotic despots using their financial and/or political power for greed.
   
   • (Now why doesn't that surprise me...?)

What they should do instead is work on the "Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act" (or OPEN Act). Developed as a reaction to SOPA and PIPA, the OPEN Act intends on countering online piracy but in a matter than doesn't screw the average person or organization over - unlike how SOPA and PIPA are worded.

Yes, I'm aware that the OPEN Act is probably still as flawed as its opponents. However, from what I've seen thus far, it handles the electronic security of the Internet a lot better than the opposition.

To prove its point, here's a comparison chart (courtesy of NetCoalition) that sums up the points of these three pieces of legislation and compares them.

Charts. Always fun, always informative. Can also be used to expose constitutional violations.

While the OPEN Act is far from perfect, it fares a lot better than SOPA and PIPA.





If SOPA and PIPA get enacted, all I can say is this: the Internet is FRAKKED.
PLEASE do your part to get these horrible pieces of legislature stopped!