The writing is on the wall...in zeros and ones.
Arguably, the 2011 occupy movement and the like signal the cusp of a revolution for some and a something else for others. Whispers of Armageddon or an epiphany of epic proportions dawning over the masses only add to speculation about the year ahead. An "epiphany" that may have very well been sparked by a gem we like to call the World Wide Web. Which is epic in and of itself. I'd expressed in a prior post, how the 21st century is The Fifth Great Awakening in American history. The past few years alone have been fancied "The Age of Enlightenment". Tomato. To-mah-toe. It's all relative. Nonetheless, the face of the free world has and is continually changing... and change is rarely a smooth transition as chaos is the mother of order.
So, what could be worse than a world without Twinkies? A world without a useful Internet. In the mid 90's the dot-com boom was born. Fast forward a decade later and the Internet is already on skid row facing dot-com crash. According to a recent Wikipedia blackout on the English version of their website -- typed across a bleak, black and grey homepage reads, ''...U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet." As of January 18, 2012 traditional use of the site is blocked for 24 hours. Wikipedia is one of many sites including giants Google and Yahoo.com to be affected by new legislation and are actively protesting.
What legislation? Well, the keyword here is censorship. The legislation is Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The catalyst to this legislation -- and what social media companies are touting as a "China-scale censorship" of the United States Internet -- is piracy. Piracy is the illegal practice of online file-sharing. In relation to copyright infringement and sales; understandably, the entertainment industry is spearheading the anti-piracy initiative on Capitol Hill. Specifically, with PIPA.
"However, in the name of intellectual-property rights, media companies have enlisted a bipartisan chunk of Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation weighted irrationally in their favor. Copyright holders want to give themselves and the U.S. Department of Justice the power to block websites accused of infringement. They want to force Internet service providers to create a wall between their customers and these websites. They want to force banks and payment services like PayPal to cut off these websites’ money. They want the websites removed from search results and to ban people from linking to them. And all of that, without any kind of formal hearing. The measures won’t stop copyright infringement. The Internet, and the flow of information, will find a way around any dam the entertainment industry tries to put up. But as ineffective as the measure may be, to continue with the metaphor, the dams themselves will do serious damage to the ecology of the web." --San Diego CityBeat, Staff (click here for full article)
Wikipedia stands firm and warns all end users of what they believe is at stake; asking visitors to "Imagine a world without free knowledge". A nightmare if you're an information junkie like myself. An the Internet is our main supplier. Yes. Poor analogy, but do you see what I'm getting at? Though the Internet can never replace good old-fashioned books or a telephone call for that matter; it is an invaluable asset and defined an important stride in modern technology and facilitating all manner of speech (and the First Amendment Right that comes along with it). Bottom line. I take the stance that piracy is wrong and should be dealt with accordingly. Yet, blind censorship of Internet would do much more harm than good.
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