The Internet has always been a place where people are free to share ideas with their friends and family members. Since its very beginning, the Internet has been home to a group of people who are not only consumers but also producers. No longer do people simply sit on the couch and watch a television show; they use what they see on television to create and share new ideas with people they care about. Sometimes these ideas include material that may be copyrighted by a media company. An example of this would be if you heard a great song on the radio and you wanted to make a mix CD of songs like that for a friend. The act of copying that song onto a CD and giving it to your friend without paying extra money for it terribly scares the media companies because it means that they do not have complete control over their material. In effect, they cannot make a continuous profit off it.
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For nearly twenty years this fear has driven media companies in the United States have expressed their concerns to Congress of making it illegal to share or copy anything on the Internet that costs any money. With this fear in mind, the Audio Home Recording Act was passed in 1992 by Congress. Simply stated, this bill meant that while you could make mix CDs for friends or for private use, you could not make high quality CDs to sell for profit. To the companies that had desperately wanted this bill, it was not at all what they expected it to be. They had wanted Congress to make the file sharing of copyrighted material illegal.
The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA as it commonly known today, is another attempt by media companies to protect their assets from consumers that would file share otherwise. This Texan Senator Lamar Smith first proposed the bill in October 2011 as a means of ending file sharing of copyrighted material. In simple terms, the bill would affect popular sites like YouTube or Facebook, which have copyrighted material on them; in response to SOPA, such sites would only have two options: shut down or eliminate all copyrighted material. Treasured television shows on YouTube, like Boy Meets World or Sesame Street, would be taken offline, and those posting the videos would be fined and possibly arrested. Luckily, this bill was tabled by the Senate on January 20th along with the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA. But these two bills mark the beginning of a greater movement that media companies have been trying to implement since the birth of the Internet. Make no mistake. This is a worldwide issue that will continue to infringe Internet users’ rights for generations to come.
The ultimate question though with something as frightening as this is: what can be done to change the minds of the senators in charge of it? One simple task is to pick up the phone! Call, email, or even snail mail your senator and remind him or her of your influence. You have the vote and the right to ask them to treat Internet users like adults. We shouldn’t be punished like kids sticking their hands in the cookie jar. Always remember that a single voice can be the tipping point to sway an opinion.Â
Photo Sources:
http://www.itsagadget.com/2011/12/google-opposes-sopa-censorship.html
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/moment-space/2011/de…