Apparently I’m offending people with this post. Please note, it is satire. I do not support legislation written to enforce Luddite ideas on technology. Bad idea. Really, really bad idea.</ooc>
SOPA and PIPA must be allowed to pass. The world needs the technological infrastructure that American business will bring when these laws pass. As a decent citizen of the world I demand we pass these legislations.
While it seems that this PIPA and SOPA put too much power in the hands of chuckleheads who’s only concern is recouping the losses of the latest Big Mama movie what’s really going on here is the undermining of their power and handing it over to the world. See, SOPA and PIPA are American legislation, meaning they can only dictate what American DNS providers, American financial services, American search engines, American web sites, and American ad services do. But they can not dictate what foreign providers do and there’s no reason you, as an internet user, can’t use a foreign DNS resolver. In fact according to the language of PIPA and SOPA your website can still be hosted domestically so long as a foreign DNS provides the link.
Here’s what’s going to happen. Every website which hosts user generated content, even text comments, will be liable not only for copyrighted violations but for facilitating copyright violation. This means all you have to do is find one place where you can post a comment and put up a mention of how to rip a BluRay and the whole site is blacklisted. No American DNS can resolve to them, no American ad provider can service them, no American search engine can refer to them, and no other site can legally link to them, meaning every site on the internet will be required, to remain in compliance with the law, to be ready at a moments notice to scour any mention of any blacklisted site from their pages or they too will be liable to prosecution. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the internet is kinda connected. There is no way every site will be able to comply. The ban hammer will spread like wild fire.
Soon, to avoid prosecution every DNS provider, ad generator, online financial service, and search engine will either move to foreign shores or foreign services will pop up to take their place free from fear of this evil legislation. With this deAmericanization of the internet will come a building up of the technological infrastructure of the rest of the world. And the chuckleheads who have worked to pass this legislation will watch as their power slips through their clenched fingers.
Sure it’ll be a rough couple of months, maybe couple of years, and some sites won’t make it. Chances are your favorite site won’t survive the transition since most of the internet is physically hosted in America. But hey, that’s the price of progress. Can’t make a worldwide omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Still think this is a bad idea? Good. So do I. Want something you can do about it?
Watch this video. (wish I could embed it)
Spread the word.
RSS Comments.
January 18th, 2012 - 10:19 am
What’s above is satire. SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and the rest are evil.
This isn’t what I expected to spend my morning doing. I have endermen to hunt.
Believe it or not I had actually typed up a longer rant about how evil SOPA and PIPA were and how stupid the people who were getting the power was before discovering the “only in America” loophole and deciding to go the satire route.
But on the off chance that you read this and think “actually, this could be a good thing in the long run” consider this: This legislation hand the keys of the internet over to people who thought it would be a good idea to put unskippable accusatory infomercials on DVDs trying to associate copyright infringement with theft. Not only is that like trying to say “joyriding is murder” (it’s semantics, but in law semantics counts), but those adverts made more people aware that they could get movies for free online then they stopped the practice.
And if this legislation passes and the worldwide migration happens as predicted do you think these morons will be content to watch their power slip away? Heck no. Next thing they’d do is insist all traffic incoming to America will be censored requiring the instillation of special hardware on all incoming lines. After all, what’s good for China….
Let’s curb stomp this legislation.
January 20th, 2012 - 11:06 am
Hahaha, nice writing. You had me going there for a moment until I read the end.
The thing that scares me about this is that citizen’s will not be voting for this one. It will be the politicians thinking about how much money they can get out of this.
I just hope that it gets turned down. In Canada, we have to pay extra costs if our internet bandwidth passed a certain limit, IN ADDITION to the fees we are already paying! It’s bad enough already. Of course, we can simply switch to another service that doesn’t have this type of billing. But if SOPA/PIPA takes over, one cannot simply switch to someone else to get around this.
My fear is that these bills will inspire other countries to enforce their own brand of censorship.