SOPA: Why it’s bad and our stand point

SOPA/PIPA (Stop Online Piracy Act/Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a bill trying to be pushed through congress that would censor much of our internet. Let me explain,

SOPA is a bill which aims to stop online piracy – or the downloading of paid property online without paying. Downloading for free. That sounds like a great plan, however. The scope of what it covers is far too large, it includes user generated content as well. Take Youtube for example. It would be shut down, there is tons of copywritten material freely viewable on YouTube. This goes for Facebook as well. You post an image or logo that is under copyright, Facebook will go down. How do they do this? It is a DNS blocking system, similar to the way China’s censorship online works. It takes hold of your internet provider and blocks the domains with infringing material. So the site doesn’t go down, however, it is now blocked from yours and everyone else’s ISP. The owner of the domain will also be sued for the material on the site.

Why is it a big deal? This is censorship. The internet is something still developing – always changing. If we mess with it now it may never go back the same. Leave the internet how it is.

Our standpoint on this is to stop it. Some of our games contain free 3d models that may be covered under this, so any and all revenue would be lost and we would be done. We have already emailed local senators and tweeted them. To get in contact with yours, type your zip code here on Wikipedia’s Zip Code lookup and email them. In the mean time, watch this video, it will explain in graphic detail. Thanks for helping defeat SOPA.