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January 24, 2012



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ACTA, SOPA and PIPA would destroy the Internet

by Christian Gin Jan 24, 2012 3:15 pm Tags: ACTA, censorship, internet, memes, online piracy, PIPA, privacy, SOPA



Jasper Rubenstein, Spartan Daily
Christian Gin is a staff writer.


Imagine making a web slideshow video using your favorite music as the background audio.

By rule of the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), PIPA (Protect IP Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) acts, you are unable to do this because of copyright laws.

SOPA is a potential law that derives from the principles of ACTA and applies only to the United States.

The PIPA is the third potential act to affect the internet.

This proposed law in the United States would create the ability to take down websites that contain copyright material.

An owner can take legal action against any anyone who infringes on their material.

The Department of Justice would also have the right to demand search engines and social networking sites block those websites that have copyright material.

This would make sure that no one can illegally download their favorite music or movies or even pictures they like, or use any other material that is copyright.

Now it sounds like a good idea to make sure criminals don’t pirate any multimedia property that someone owns, right?

Well, there is a catch to this.

People can now be censored for even a simple picture of something in a slide show of theirs.

Videos would have to have only original content everywhere.

Whether it’s music, video or pictures, it has to be someone’s own material rather than a song by an artist or picture by a famous photographer.

An example of the ACTA movement is how the well-known website MegaUpload was taken down by the U.S. Department of Justice.

MegaUpload was a website known for posting various things like movies and television episodes.

The website was good for hosting videos and providing downloads of media content.

The United States Department of Justice defined MegaUpload as a website that had committed copyright infringement as it contained episodes from many television shows without their permission.

Because of the acts, several websites similar to MegaUpload will be tracked down by the Department of Justice and be killed off for good in the near future.

Their long term goal would be to kill off any peer-to-peer (P2P) websites that let others share any kind of music or media.

This would include the P2P music file sharing program Limewire.

People would also be unable to stream an event live using any kind of streaming website.

This would be deemed as illegal and not allowed.

The internet would not be what it is today, it would be only for serious things, and everything that is fun could be jeopardized by ACTA, SOPA and PIPA.

In response to this, Wikipedia put up a protest known as “A world without knowledge,” shutting down the English portion of Wikipedia for the entire day of Jan. 18, 2012.

Google also spread the word about PIPA and SOPA with information displayed on their website.

Google’s homepage displayed its logo being blacked out, and clicking on it would redirect visitors to a page containing videos they made explaining the dangers of PIPA and SOPA.

These acts would be horrible for anyone using the internet.

ACTA, PIPA and SOPA would censor everything on the internet making it illegal for people to do pretty much anything.

The ability to put something on YouTube would be very limited to things someone filmed with their camera.

Several websites would be shut down because they would contain a copyright images or music within it.

All of these acts would take away freedom of speech and violate the first amendment.

Everyone needs to take a stand and let everybody know that this is horrible.

Make your voices heard, that these possible acts are not acceptable for freedom of speech.

Sign the petition against these dangerous acts that will ruin websites and businesses at americancensorship.org.

Tell your congressman how dangerous the acts could be, and how it harms the future of the internet.

SOPA, PIPA and ACTA are jeopardizing all the great things about the internet and we have to stop it.



Ted Rudow III, MA on January 27, 2012 :

Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views, but Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.

Italian Fascists described fascism as a right-wing ideology in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism.
Fascism promoted principles of masculine heroism, militarism and discipline, and rejected cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. Fascism has proved it is not one bit interested in the democratic process. The Christian right is a major political force in the West, supported by the Republican Party in the United States. This is born out in the Republican Debates.
Many topics of the debates are very bias in that. Fascism is the socialism of the rich in which the rich get together and cooperate to protect and keep their wealth and enforce their form of government on the poor. Let us never to go back to that!
Ted Rudow III, MA
Class of 1996