The Soapbox: SOPA and internet freedom.
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I want to try to make this a short piece, because lord knows how much I can delve in to this subject and idea of freedom, constitutional rights, the state of the United States today, and free speech.You know when you feel like that person yelling very loudly and waving your hands back and forth to warn that danger is approaching as everyone just sort of enjoys the party? They are having too much fun of course, or are too preoccupied with their own small drama to pay attention to the real tragedy coming. This is how I feel about what's been happening in the United States every year since I became an adult. Maybe you can say that is because I am more aware, and it is true, I am more politically up to date than I was in high school, but I was no oblivious teenager, I was very aware that there were things wrong in the world and they need repair. How could I have imagined though, how far and how fast this country that my parents came to when I was a child for better opportunity could fall. It's frightening.
SOPA is another in a series of dangerous decisions the joke of Congress and Senate that currently sit in Washington are contemplating, for their corporate interests, for their own greed, and for a future that they already see as bought and paid for by Big Pharma and Disney. SOPA essentially will use the same type of censorship practices that China uses (yes China, you know the place so many Americans are terrified of) to block sites in the quest to "eliminate piracy of drugs, movies, music, etc."
As a human being who has spent more than five minutes on the internet, it is laughable to think that this would be possible with out a widespread control of the internet. OH WAIT, THIS IS PROMOTING THE IDEA OF WIDESPREAD CONTROL OF THE INTERNET. The internet, the last bastion of true free speech even for the smelly thirteen year old trolls and homophobic racists of the world would become another notch in the belt of the United States government, and it wonders why it keeps catching all these nasty diseases from the amount of fucking it is doing to everyone everywhere. Recession, poverty, unwinnable wars, threat of attack, all of these are symptoms of a government out of control, a government overreaching in all the WRONG places and trimming of all the RIGHT ones. It is very difficult to imagine a world where everyone will agree, it seems almost impossible to get TWO people to agree at any given point( you understand this more if you are in a relationship) let alone 300 million, don't even get started on 7 billion, but can we please all stand up and agree that balance is important, nay a necessity in order to function in this world of ours. Can we all agree that systematic control of expression and the right to express is not the way?
Free speech and freedom of thought are NOT easy goals, some people say terrible awful things and think terrifying thoughts, and while I may not always approve their right to act upon them I do approve of their right to DISCUSS them, and then get a boot to the head by everyone with more sense than them.
So SOPA, if this passes, it's one more nail in the coffin, another NDAA in the form of thought, an intangible pair of handcuffs placed on true innovation and REAL solutions to piracy.
This is all fear and greed tactics, instead of adapting and growing the people supporting this bill are content to wave a very blunt object and hope that they bludgeon enough heads to make waves. Stop SOPA and PIPA, protest, petition, do the right thing.
As a sidenote, my views on internet "piracy" are fast and loose, I understand the negative aspects of it,but the other half of me not only sees the realism of the situation but also appreciates the fundamental idea behind certain types of piracy. That is another discussion for another day.
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