SOPA and PIPA Affects Us All. Take Action Today!

Imagine you went to your favorite website, the one you visit every day, and it was gone.

No explanation.

Nothing.

Just black.

This may be the future.

Currently, there are two bills going through Congress and Senate that could make this a reality. While these bills are meant to stop online piracy of movies, music, and other copyright content, especially overseas, the wording is so vague that, should these bills pass, the possible ramifications could affect us all.

SOPA and PIPA

In America, we’ve always been innocent until proven guilty. These bills could cause any website suspected of linking to possible infringing material to be shut down.

Keywords

Suspected – Yes, suspected. Not proven.

Linking To – The content doesn’t have to even be on their site. It could be on a site they link to.

Not just shut down – Their IP address could be blocked from search engines, advertisers and income removed, and face possible fines and even jail time. They’d disappear off the internet.

SOPA goes as far as to include those who don’t understand the law, not just those ignoring it.

Why should we care?

It turns us all into criminals.

I’d like to think people in power wouldn’t abuse that power, but they already have. And, this bill would give them even more power. Simply sharing our lives and expressing ourselves could become illegal.

Moms could face a lawsuit for sharing family videos of their babies dancing to a copyright song.

You could get sued for sharing your wedding video on Facebook or YouTube if a copyright song plays in the background.

Your 12-year old could face up to $150,000 in fines for using a service you pay for monthly and didn’t realize wasn’t 100% legal.

Vindictive people could use the bills to take revenge against websites and blogs and most definitely would.

Justin Bieber could have ended up in jail for 5 years, instead of becoming a teenage heartthrob.

Sites like Greenpeace would disappear in the United States, instead of winning lawsuits against large corporations who aren’t happy about the use of their logos in Go Green and activist campaigns.

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, and blogs where users contribute content would become responsible for comments and content shared by users. They’d eventually cease to exist or have to censor every comment, photo, and video by every user.