Wikipedia has just joined a long and still growing list of Internet services, and yes, that includes Google, which will shut down for 24 hours over Wednesday. That’s tomorrow, folks.
The purpose is to protest two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, PIPA, which are described as “a mess” and “poorly designed”, a danger to a free and open Internet and that if the bills pass they’ll give lawmakers an array of tools to censor the Internet with. This includes being able to “black out” or virtually eliminate, specific websites.
The Internet has caused a dramatic evolution on our planet by putting us all so very much more in touch with each other than we ever were before. It hasn’t just revolutionized the way we do business and the speed at which we do it but also our communication has gone from “snail mail” which took days or weeks, to email which is nearly instant.
The primary reason the Internet has grown so rapidly and has been so successful is because governments have no control over it. Every time government officials get hold of something, it starts bogging down in bureaucratic mud until it almost drags to a stop. I give you building permits as one excellent example.
There should be no control of the Internet whatsoever. All people should be free to send and receive anything they want. There’s laws in place regulating the possession of certain materials however they’re obtained and those laws should continue to be enforced. For instance, child porn sites are still being discovered and their owners imprisoned as they should be, but that’s not a dark mark on the Internet anymore than it is on postal services that deliver the same sort of material.
In other words, these bills want to shoot the messenger and reverse the transforming technological and social evolution brought about by that messenger. Considering how Earths human population has grown since the Internet came about and how vital it is in organizing the feeding and housing of all those billions, I can see why some people want to take control of it. The power of the Internet must be an alluring plum of majestic proportions. To do so, though, will set the whole planet back unimaginably.
The Islamic dictatorship of Iran is currently in the process of cutting off their citizens access to the global Internet entirely and chopping it down to only within Iran. Good for them! All our sanctions have had very little effect but you wait and watch, no longer being able to do online business outside little Iran will do more harm to their economy than anything we could have done short of bombing them into oblivion. Iran is going to be the poster child for what not to do with the Internet.
I mostly agree, restricting things hardly helps, and if people are plotting terrorism etc better they do so where they can be monitored. Also too easy for governments to suppress truths, about immigration etc, that do not fit the global agenda.
Although I suppose allowing people to organise riots, as we saw here recently, might be something to criminalise – without the instant effect of the internet and mobile phones much of it would never have happened.
“SOPA” in Portuguese means “soup”.
“PIPA” in Portuguese means “kite”.
This new laws sounds a littler stupid, and it can be a lot stupid.
LOL. Yep, alphabet soup.
Certainly, there is a lot of useless noise on the Internet.
It is up to use, the web crawlers, to use discernment.
In my view, the government’s getting ahold of the Internet will result in curbing the free exchange of information and, even more dangerous perhaps, the voices of dissent.
Any compromise of freedom of speech leads to the road to serfdom!