What Will SOPA Take From You?

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Clarissa

January 18, 2012

What would you miss most on the internetz if the supporters of SOPA/PIPA get their way?

I will miss the possibility to quote stories, link to them, and discuss them. It will feel really weird to write a post saying, “I read a story today that said some interesting things that I can’t share with you and whose provenance must remain shrouded in mystery to protect us all from something undefinable.”

I will miss Wikipedia, too. Today, while it was down, I missed it. I wanted to research Sen. Dick Durbin who supports SOPA, and where was I supposed to go? To his official site? He sounds better than Jesus on his site (seriously, check it out.) Besides, his site is set up in a way that prevents you from leaving it easily. Is there really a person around who doesn’t use Wikipedia at least once a day?

I will miss letting people comment on the blog freely, exchange links, discuss things without me having to vet every comment before letting it through.

I will miss Craigslist because it’s a wonderful website that serves a multitude of useful purposes.

I will miss all those blogs I read and that keep me informed about the news.

What will you miss if we allow this to happen?

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7 responses to “What Will SOPA Take From You?”

nominatissima

January 18, 2012

I’d miss Wikipedia, it’s a wonderful writer’s tool, and I love contributing to it as well as reading it.
I’d miss link roundups from various blogs.
I’d will miss youtube videos of my favourite artists, comedians, and other performers which don’t have obscenely stupid ads before them.
I’d miss Rifftrax, The Nostalgia Chick, Target Women, and other internet programs which rely on commentating on copyrighted material to produce the laughter and insights they do.
And I would miss blogging. Oh lord, I don’t know what I would do without blogging.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 18, 2012
  
  Oh, I can’t live without blogging. Blogging is a life line for so many people.
  
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Tori

January 18, 2012

The satisfaction plus eyeroll of googling a student’s suspicious paper — only to have it turn up word for word on a “buy term papers cheap” site.

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P. rhoeas

January 19, 2012

I will miss all the silly ass pictures.

And yes. Yes. Most of all, I will miss ’60s Spiderman Meme.

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N G

January 19, 2012

Nobody seems to be talking about this topic on SOPA. The following is a quote from Michael Geist who is a Canadian Internet specialist lawyer and professor at the University of Ottawa on his website (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/) :

“First, the SOPA provisions are designed to have an extra-territorial effect that manifests itself particularly strongly in Canada. As I discussed in a column last year, SOPA treats all dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domain as domestic domain names for U.S. law purposes. Moreover, it defines “domestic Internet protocol addresses” – the numeric strings that constitute the actual address of a website or Internet connection – as “an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district of the United States.” Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. Its territory includes the U.S., Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes. To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.“

What this means is that the American government through this bill asserts the right to censure Canadian Provincial and Federal government websites and since all levels of government in Canada have tried over the last couple of years to make the websites the main conduit between the population and all levels of government, this bill represents an unprecedented intrusion into Canadian sovereignty which no independent country should accept and allows the US authorities to interpose themselves between the citizens of Canada and its government on a massive scale.

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1. P. rhoeas
  
  January 19, 2012
  
  Woah nellie.
  
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2. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 19, 2012
  
  When did things like that ever stop the US government from doing whatever it wishes to do? I don’t think it even recognizes the concept of anybody’s sovereignty. That, at least, is what it’s entire foreign policy since the XIXth century has demonstrated.
  
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