How Will SOPA Affect Canadians? Including Kpop

Jan 18

Posted by Neil Noonan

Since you’re reading this post, I’m taking it as if you’ve already perused around the internet today.  Great, so you’ve seen these 4 letter acronyms typed everywhere too.  No, they’re not names for a pair of cute bunnies; they’re bills that have been presented to the US House of Representatives that could, if passed, potentially abolish the free internet as we know it.
Like most of my posts, I don’t aim to confuse you with a load of legal knowledge that you’d probably forget about anyway.  After reading this post, if you’re still curious about what exactly is going on and the precise language the bill, it’s a few hyperlinks away on literally every website you visit today.  Take a glance at this Gizmodo post, I found it extremely helpful when trying to understand everything.
To be clear, I’m trying to explain how this affects us as daily internet users to the best of my ability and none of this should be mistaken as absolute fact.
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) are very similar, and aim to combat piracy from foreign websites.  These bills have been pushed and publicly driven by huge corporations, mostly content providers, to help protect what is theirs and make sure they’re not only getting the biggest slice of pie, but the pie in its entirety.
If passed, these bills give the power to corporations such as Disney, Fox or Warner Bros to simply send a message claiming a “good faith belief” and have the infringing content removed from said site.  Even worse, these corporations and government can take these sites out of search engines, remove their ads (money makers) and possibly get it blacklisted all together.  The hilarious part is, they wouldn’t ever have to pass this through a judge or court.  If these bills are passed, so much power is given to the government and corporations.

This would make blogging nearly impossible.  Everyone steals everyone’s shit, but it’s okay right now because we all put our own twist and ideas on top of it.  If passed, this bill would kill most independent bloggers because all of our content wouldn’t be allowed – it’d be as easy as snapping a finger for these big corps to get rid of independent sites.  All of our news would come from CNN.com, FOX.com, MSN.com and so forth.
Each one of the sites you use on a daily basis such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would be severely crippled.  Sharing links would be a disaster and apparently a one time slip up could lead to your account getting terminated.  The big war would come down to these social networking sites standing up against the government, and refusing to abide by SOPA and PIPA – who do you think would win that war?
The major hit we’ll take as consumers is in our wallets.  Say goodbye to Limewire (or y’all are using Frostwire now right?), say goodbye to PirateBay and torrents, and say hello to your credit card.  I bet you’ll have memorized the 16 digit number by 2013.  It sucks too because a majority of artists really do not give a shit about piracy.  The more their music is downloaded, free or not, the more people listen and share and more show up at their shows.  To my knowledge, their shows are where they make their cash anyways.  Apparently iTunes rips off artists constantly, but that’s another conversation for another time.
The scariest part for me is the future.  I truly believe that if these two bills were to pass that we’d all be okay.  It would suck, we’d notice it, but we’d all be fine.  I’d have a lot less movies and TV shows to watch, and a lot less music to listen too, but I’d survive.  I have this feeling that this can be the beginning of something horrible, and something that could honestly damage my generation for the rest of our lives.  If the government begins to regulate the internet, its free speech and endless pool of free knowledge, can you imagine where we’d end up?  I’d be in jail for sure.
How will this affect us in Canada?
This is an American bill yes, but due to the extremely long arm of US law, Canada would basically be under the same guidelines as the United States.
University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist explains…

In the eyes of U.S. law, websites with domain names ending in .com, .net and .org are treated as American domestic domain names, regardless of where their owners are based.
SOPA ignores the fact that IP addresses are assigned by regional, not national, entities. The American Registry for Internet Numbers allocates IP addresses for Canada (both for individual customers and governments) and 20 Caribbean nations, as well as the U.S. However, under SOPA, the IP addresses it allocates would be considered “domestic,” i.e., U.S., IP addresses.

Hmm, so neilnoonan.net is fucked.  My ignorancepodcast.com is fucked as well.
How SOPA and PIPA will affect Canada is uncertain, especially because as we speak this bill is in the process of being rewritten, and it’s hugely because of the protest.  If these bills do pass in the US, I would not be surprised to see a similar Canadian bill passed shortly after.
What can we do to help stop this from happening?
First off, become educated on the topic.  I’m FAR from where I want to be when it comes to being able to explain and form an opinion on this matter, but that doesn’t mean I’m not reading, listening and watching everything I can to learn.  I suggest you do the same.  Before you know it, those who choose to ignore everything might be shit out of luck and wondering where their loveable free and open internet went.
If you’re interested in taking it a step further, Wikipedia suggests…

Contact your local State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or similar branch of government. Tell them you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and any similar legislation. SOPA and PIPA will affect sites outside of the United States, and actions to sites inside the United States (like Wikipedia) will also affect non-American readers — like you. Calling your own government will also let them know you don’t want them to create their own bad anti-Internet legislation.

I can’t emphasize enough how big of a deal this is and much bigger of a deal this potentially could be.  The internet is our free world we have created to share creative ideas, express ourselves and enjoy content that is meant to be enjoyed for free!  The biggest mistake the government has ever made was failing to regulate the internet, and this is their first step in trying to take it all back.
Don’t be ignorant to this unfortunate situation, learn, share and educate the people around you to promote awareness!

WTF is SOPA ? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet

Uploaded by TotalHalibut on Dec 17, 2011

Graphics taken from http://www.americancensorship.org - or should I say, pirated from them.

John "TotalBiscuit" Bain is a UK Law graduate, professional gaming commentator and journalist.

RETRACTION : Activision are not on the list of supporters for SOPA, EA is. The point is still valid, however I'd like to apologise for incorrectly naming Activision. I mixed up the two publishers in my notes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ngd4r/i_work_in_news_this_is_how_...
http://tinyurl.com/techdirtsopa
http://reddit.com/r/sopa
http://www.americancensorship.org
http://tinyurl.com/universalcensors
http://tinyurl.com/writetocongress
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet
http://t.co/vIhyPU9z
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-vote-delayed/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/free-speechs-weak-links-under-internet-...

PIPA and SOPA Co-Sponsors Use Facebook to Abandon Bills

Don't ever let anyone tell you there isn't power in the protest. Members of the U.S. Congress have abandoned the controversial Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the wake of Wednesday's Internet blackout 

 

18 Jan 2012 Sharise Cruz  

Since you’re on the Internet right now, you’ve undoubtedly at least heard of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills. SOPA and PIPA aim to curb online piracy of copyrighted material but have been widely criticized for their potential to negatively impact the Internet and American business through censorship.
On Wednesday, January 18, major websites, including Google, Reddit and Wikipedia decided to completely blackout or modify their homepages in protest of SOPA and PIPA, and it appears that members of the U.S. Congress have taken notice and been moved to abandon the bills.
Arizona Rep. and SOPA co-sponsor Ben Quayle abandoned the bill Tuesday, but two U.S. Senators actually announced their withdrawals by way of the Internet Wednesday morning.
Florida Senator and PIPA co-sponsor Marco Rubio was the first to announce on Wednesday that he wanted to pull his name from the bill.
In a Facebook post titled “A Better Way to Fight the Online Theft of American Ideas and Jobs,” Rubio wrote:
“As a senator from Florida, a state with a large presence of artists, creators and businesses connected to the creation of intellectual property, I have a strong interest in stopping online piracy that costs Florida jobs.
However, we must do this while simultaneously promoting an open, dynamic Internet environment that is ripe for innovation and promotes new technologies.”
Rubio was followed by Texas Senator John Cornyn, head of the campaign operation for the Republican party. Cornyn took to his Facebook page to say that it’s “better to get this done right rather than fast and wrong. Stealing content is theft, plain and simple, but concerns about unintended damage to the internet and innovation in the tech sector require a more thoughtful balance, which will take more time.”
According to the Omaha World-Herald, a spokesperson for Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry said that he is also planning to withdraw his support.
Both bills have gathered support from various bipartisan committees and media companies, but the Obama Administration has spoken out against SOPA and several Internet companies, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have written to the U.S. Congress to express concern about SOPA and PIPA’s threat to innovation, creativity and American job creation.
For more information about PIPA and SOPA, take a look at the following links:
http://vimeo.com/31100268
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/