Don't Censor the Net

I know this is kind of old hat at this point, but I'm sort of guilty of ignoring it until very recently.

Our government wants to pass certain bills that will (paraphrased) "make a good run at trying to stop online trafficking of copyrighted material and end internet piracy".  All well and dandy, but...at what cost?

SOPA

SOPA,  or the Stop Online Piracy Act, was introduced late in October 2011.  "The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods."¹

PIPA

"The Act protects individual privacy by requiring, in most cases, private-sector organizations to obtain consent for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information and providing individuals with a right of access to their own personal information."¹

What it actually means

Here’s what the government can do to foreign websites under even the most narrow reading of SOPA section 102 and PIPA section 3:

1. Order internet service providers to alter their DNS servers from resolving the domain names of websites in foreign countries that host illegal copies of videos, songs, and photos.
2. Order search engines like Google to modify search results to exclude foreign websites that host illegally copied material (ie hand pick what internet you see)
3. Order payment providers like PayPal to shut down the payment accounts of foreign websites that host illegally copied material (just like they did for pirate bay & ATDHE.net).
4. Order ad services like Google’s AdSense to refuse any ads or payment from foreign sites that host illegally copied content.

¹

For reference:
Let's say I write an entry here on Adventures of a Self Proclaimed Nerd and I include a picture that I obtained from a third party. 

Oh gee...not like I've ever done that before...

²

These acts could view these images as pirated material and block my website.  However, it would only really block out my page, but not my URL which seems kind of counter-productive in the grand scheme of things as it's only censoring my material rather than eliminating it from the web.

As a member of the internet generation (granted I didn't get the internet in my house until senior year of high school), I feel like it's my duty to stand against these acts.  Don't you?

Join the cause, fight against PIPA and SOPA!

Wikipedia is blacking out their pages for 24 hours in protest, and giving you a means to contact your legislators to let them know you are opposed to it.  Google is also generating an online petition.  It literally takes 5 minutes to call your legislators and sign the petition.  Hell, even StumbleUpon is getting in on this!

Don't let the net go dark.

Here's a list of other websites going dark in protest of these acts.