internet on strike (not a paranoid rant)
Posted by jaked | Filed under i don't need no stinking label
james vincent mcmorrow – we don’t eat (adventure club remix) 
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you may have noticed that on january 18th several of the websites you frequent (wikipedia.com, google.com, craigslist.com, etc.) were blacked out to various degrees in protest for the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA and the Protect Intellectual Property Act or PIPA. both of these bills are heavily lobbied by the entertainment industry (music, film, you know the drill) including a sizable (read somewhere to the tune of $94 million+) “donation” from the motion picture association of america to the senate. for an easier understanding of the bills you can check this out this technical explanation of the bills.
you’re probably thinking, “this is to stop piracy, so why is this a bad thing?” and i would agree with you, i’m in no way advocating piracy or anything like that. the thing that has me worried is the sweeping language of these bills. under this legislation everything from facebook to this blog (because it has a comment system) could at a whim, be blocked for anything that is deemed “illegal” by pretty much anyone.
i see this as a gateway to censoring the internet in a way that takes away any sort of freedom to share ideas, thoughts, opinions, etc. it’s not quite the same as the countries of egypt and libya taking down the entire internet during the respective revolutions that the countries went through last year but it could have similar repercussions. the sweeping language of these bills could silence any sort of freedom of speech and as someone who tries to use the internet as a form of platform to share my faith i could very well be targeted and taken down as well.
it’s a form of gateway drug… similar to that of the hate crime laws. this legislation judges intent rather then the crime itself. because if you allow the government to decide intent, then where are we a couple years from now? years from now do they use this law to say, “what jake is saying out of the Bible is hate and is therefore illegal”? if we can take the 1st amendment and twist it to mean that you can’t play “silent night” at the mall without violating somebody’s rights at christmas, do you not think you can take a hate crime law and say that i’m not allowed to say what i think from the Bible because it’s hate?
meanwhile, i can burn the american flag and slap my qur’an, but i can’t put a manger scene in front of city hall. don’t get me wrong, what happened to matthew shepard in 1998 and started the hate crime legislation is appalling and horribly wrong. i’m also not saying that this is the motivation behind either law, i’m just saying this is the direction we could be heading and we need to be aware of what could eventually be a possibility.
i’m all for shutting down piracy, go for it, do what you need to do to protect your intellectual property. but when that interferes with basic freedoms that’s when there needs to be some pretty significant push back. i hope this doesn’t come off as a paranoid rant but i really do think that the days where it’s “easy” to be a Christian in america are coming to a close and we should be aware of that closing window.
