By Dennis Finocchiaro
I think Neil Gaiman said it best in his journal post. Google made sure we were aware of it, as did Craigslist and numerous other websites.
Google summed it up by saying:
Law-abiding U.S. internet companies would have to monitor everything users link to or upload or face the risk of time-consuming litigation. That’s why [many well-known websites]wrote a letter to Congress saying these bills “pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation.” It’s also why 55 of America’s most successful venture capitalists expressed concern that PIPA “would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness”. More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation.
The government could possibly abuse these laws and force search engines to delete certain websites from searches. They could kill millions of jobs that are Internet-related and are unlikely to fulfill the reason they are even being considered: to stop piracy.
There is no reason to believe these laws would stop piracy. The websites would just continuously change their URL and use other tactics that they already have administered to avoid penalty and/or detection.
As Gaiman so succinctly stated, “We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend. These bills would allow entire websites to be blocked without due process, causing collateral damage to the legitimate users of the same services – artists and creators like us who would be censored as a result.”
Please take action by clicking here and signing the petition.
Many websites, large and small, have put up images like this one. People are doing so on Facebook and Twitter as well to speak out against these laws.
Wragsthinks 