How to stop SOPA/PIPA

By now you must have heard about SOPA/PIPA, if not, here’s the skinny. The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protection of Intellectual Property Act are two laws currently being considered by US law makers.

The aim of these two bills is to combat online piracy and help prevent the theft of intellectual property. Sounds like a noble cause, right? The only problem is that these bills have far reaching effects, effects that could destroy the right to information on the internet.

Kumi Naidoo, International Executive director of Greenpeace, had this to say about the bills. “In the history book of bad ideas, the concept of giving corporations the right to censor the Internet has to rank among the worst ever.”

And that is basically what these bills are, a way for any big corporation to censor the internet and prevent any website from publishing information that they don’t want public. How will they do this? Well, simple.

Any corporation that feels that a website has infringed on their copyright can go to the company that hosts that website and demand that they shut the website down. If they do not comply, they will be prosecuted (or rather persecuted) under this new law. They don’t even have to prove anything in court! Now you see why this is such a bad idea.

In this past week, various websites, including Wikipedia, went dark for 24 hours in protest of this bill. Google and Facebook also publically oppose this bill. So does Greenpeace and their website also went dark for 24 hours in solidarity with Wikipedia.

Various mass protests were held all over the US to rally support against SOPA/PIPA. Various celebrities, like famous rapper B.o.B. and indie rockers MGMT, have expressed their opposition to this bill.

So what can you do to stop this from becoming law in the US and hurting internet freedom around the world? If you don’t live in the US you can sign this petition to tell the US Congress that you oppose this bill. Another way you can raise awareness about this bill and its disastrous consequences is by posting the link to this petition on Facebook and by Tweeting about it.

The only way we will be loud enough to be heard is if we stand together and speak as one voice.

(This is a post by our intern Kristian Meijer)

(Image by tvol, CC by 2.0, via Flickr)

Tags: online piracy, PIPA, SOPA