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You probably woke up this morning to realize the Internet is totally screwy CNN ,encyclopedia
,SOPA explained ,in anti-piracy Wikipedia, other websites go dark bill protest CNN, copyrighted ,
content gets stolen,
www.2012economy.org
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SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, basically dealing with issues like copyright
infringement and piracy-words we normally read on service agreements. The US government has
now passed a bill on the 26th of November 2011, to fight online trafficking, piracy, and copyright
infringement over the internet. So far so good. But really, what difference does it make to us?
Thousands of bills are passed every year, many that most of us aren't even aware of. Then why
are techie hotshots like Larry Page, Mark Zuckerburg, making such a hue and cry over it?
The bill enables the copyright holders to seek judiciary action against any website that facilitates
copyrighting. That means, search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing wouldn't be able to link
themselves to such sites (and worse feature them on their search lists). Also our beloved PayPal
will not be allowed to carry out any business transactions with such websites. This would mean the
open source software available all over the net, crack versions of expensive software, every form
of piracy rampant on the internet, will be vanishing in no time. Also it imposes charges of felony on
illegal streaming, which means no more sneak previews of movies till the official release date. For
users sharing videos on Twitter and YouTube, anything that comes under the category of mildly
offensive could be banned straightaway.
What effect worldwide could this bill have? Every other country that was in the process of passing
such a bill highlighting concerns of their interest, like capping down of political dissent, hate
speech against prominent dignitaries would get an impetus in the same direction. This eventually
would lead to the screening and deletion of everything and anything that might be posted on the
internet-as blogs, articles, hubs or whatever you name it. Basically this bill could lead to the
suppression of the basic "Freedom to speech".
USA seems to be going the same way as Chinese government did with control over China's DNS
servers. It spells a touch down on the already fluctuating markets. This bill when enacted, not only
affects just the entertainment and information technology sectors, but will have further tumultuous
repercussions on every other sector. The revenue generated through online trading or e-
commerce forms a large part of the annual U.S. revenue. To cut down on a majority of the
business-to-business trading by means of this act will lead to a significant decline in the revenue
therein.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Divya_Mohan
==== ====
You probably woke up this morning to realize the Internet is totally screwy CNN ,encyclopedia
,SOPA explained ,in anti-piracy Wikipedia, other websites go dark bill protest CNN, copyrighted ,
content gets stolen,
www.2012economy.org
==== ====