Captains Blog Stardate 01192012 Sopa and Pipa

NOTE: The text of this blog was written before these bills were postponed, please keep this in mind.

SOPA and PIPA are bills that are currently going before the United States House and Senate. SOPA is the House Bill and PIPA is the Senate Bill. SOPA stands for Stop Internet Piracy Bill and PIPA stands Prevent Internet Piracy. They are both (as the names suggest) trying to stop piracy. While I agree with trying to stop piracy, these bills are very poorly designed. Instead of stopping piracy, they restrict individual freedom. In it's current form, the bill allows corporations to make a claim that a site infringes their copyright, and the entire site can be pulled from the Internet. This means if someone illegally posts an episode of Star Trek to YouTube, all of YoutTube could get pulled from the internet, not just the infringing material. A good way to stop piracy is to simply remove the violating material from the internet, but not innocent sites.

Links

Here's a link to wikipedia's page on SOPA.

Here's a link to wikipedia's page on PIPA.

My comment of Garret's Blog.

Here's a picture of soap, this is what you will find if you type misspell SOPA on a google image search.