By Kassie Roberts–

Tumblr users got a big shock when they logged on to their profiles and saw that every single post was censored. The only indication of what was going on was a line across the top of the screen that said “Stop the Bill That Will Censor the Internet!”. The bill that Tumblr was referring to is the Stop Online Piracy Act, a federal bill which essentially gives big businesses in the movie and music industries the right to shut down and limit access to websites that they believe are “dedicated to pirated material”. These businesses, such as the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America, claim that they will target foreign sites that spread pirated material from the United States. However, what these corporations say they are going to do and what they will do are two completely different things.

The Stop Online Piracy Act gives these industries the ability to skirt around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which states that if there is a case of copyright infringement the copyright holders can take the accused to trial as their course of action.There is something very wrong with the fact that the MPAA and organizations like them would be able to tell Google and other search engines such as Yahoo! that they cannot provide links to sites with pirated content. While pirated movies are hard to justify protecting, a picture from a movie used in just the wrong way would qualify as copyright infringement. Many websites that allow picture sharing, such as the popular blog site, Tumblr, could run into an insurmountable amount of issues.

Support should be given to sites like Google, Yahoo!, and Tumblr, who have all banded together against this bill. These internet titans, along with a few others, sent a joint plea to Congress, asking that this bill not be passed, as it has the possibility to significantly slow down and stop online innovation. Amateur musicians trying to get their name out will no longer be able to post their own remixes to YouTube because of this law. Users who perform covers of popular songs might find that their videos are taken down or their accounts deleted because of copyright infringement. This will also limit small businesses from growth – if a brand new business forms and puts a website up and their name is a reference to a movie title or quote, the MPAA would have the right to shut them down, just as the RIAA would if it was a reference to a band name or song title.

The proposed bill gives businesses like MPAA and RIAA too much power over content, allowing them to limit content that internet users can see and access. This is censorship and this is wrong. These businesses should never be allowed this kind of power. While the immediate threat is to those who illegally download music and movies, the long-term threat is much more severe. This bill has the potential to effect the websites we use every day. SOPA can turn simple things such as sharing an image from your favorite movie into the suspension of your website privileges, or even legal action.

It is obvious that this bill will cause more problems than it can solve. This new bill could shut down large sections of the Internet and taint something that has always been free from censorship in the United States. The limitations that SOPA would put on the world wide web will greatly hinder innovation. Websites that thrive on entertainment and art will not be able to grow to their full potential. There are less radical and less potentially dangerous ways to limit piracy and copyright infringement, such as the amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that was suggested, but pushed aside for this unprecedented new bill.

This bill is wrong.  Support should openly be given to the internet businesses that have become staples in daily life. There is hardly a college student who doesn’t have a social network account of some kind and the number of blogs are growing by the day. This will effect anyone who has ever used a social network site, a blog, or even a search engine.

If you would like to know more about the Stop Online Piracy Act and hear from both sides simply Google the act… While you still can.

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Illustration by Baylee Pulliam/The Louisville Cardinal