Welcome to the SOPA blog, a blog where you are updated on the status of the bill and other very important things. The bill entails long legal mumbo-jumbo but here's the basic ramifications. The legislation would allow copyright holders and the justice department to seek court orders against websites, both foreign and domestic. Sounds like a good, fair bill right? WRONG! The court may shut down the website WITHOUT any sort of trial by jury, thus effectively any site can be shut down, without any trouble. Not so good anymore huh? By legal standards, it violates the precedent set in NY Times vs US and Near vs Minnesota. Effectively these cases said that you can't restrain the press before they publish anything, which is what this bill does. But even worse, movie studios can take private action against websites which they BELIEVE to be in copyright infringement, and BAM, the website is effectively dead! Now let me take you to a scenario, a scenario in which say someone posted a link to a pirated movie on facebook/google/twitter/etc. Facebook/google/etc CAN be shutdown because of that. IMAGINE the sheer ramifications of this! We live in a democracy, not a media controlled totalitarian government! For the love of god, don't less this bill pass.
No comments:
Post a Comment