Now, for those that are not aware, I like to consider myself something of a geek. I like computers and things to do with them. I read up on a lot of computer-related things. Partially because I like to keep up with the times, and partially because when things like this come up, I can do something like this with it and not sound like some sort of uneducated fool. And while I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, uneducated is not something I will ever allow myself to be.
As a lot of people are aware, the popularly used, open-sourced "dictionary" Wikipedia has shut down its English section today, from 5am, Wednesday 18 January until 5am, Thursday 19 January, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act that are currently being forced through US Congress (for those that were not aware of the longhand, SOPA and PIPA). Now, I said US Congress because that is where is it is going to be passed through. But that doesn't mean that it's only going to affect our friends and fellow humans 3000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Not by a long shot.
What you can see above are the pages used by popular open-source websites DamnLOL and Wikipedia for the next 24 hours or so, going against the SOPA and PIPA legislation. But before I go into why they have done this, allow me to tell you what the acts actually do.
Stop Online Piracy Act
This should, really speak for itself. Online Piracy related to things like Youtube, where people upload music videos by their favourite artists, be it in the form of an official video, a video with the lyrics on screen, or variosu other things including copyrighted material. It also relates to people who use Google, Yahoo, or the search engine of their choice to take images from the web of anything they like. Now, please, if you could, raise your hand if you have never watched a music video on Youtube, or saved a picture you found on Google or Photobucket. Raise your hand (for those who know how to use Photoshop) if you have never used images you have taken from the web and created something from it. Like this:
I didn't make this by the way, I nabbed it from Photobucket. If anyone's unsure, it's the characters from Twilight with the faces of characters from True Blood. And I must say, Stephen Moyer suits Robert Pattison's hair!
Now raise your hand if you have never gone onto websites like mp3skull, beemp3 or 4shared to download music. There should not be a single hand in the air. Because the fact is, even if you have just gone onto Youtube to watch the video for "Please Don't Stop The Music" by Rihanna (the reason I've chosen that song is because the official video was once the most viewed video on Youtube), you have caught yourself under this. Now, before anyone starts, I'm pretty well aware of the highly-annoying VEVO Channels, in which in order to watch a video you have to sit through a 30-second advertisement that has nothing to do with the video you are trying to watch (I love my rock and metal music, so when you're trying to listen to something that makes you want to headbang and deal with 30 seconds of crappy, cheesy advertisement jingles is just beyond annoying). But the reason those exist is that someone is forced to foot the massive bill the Youtube faces every month. Because when you click those videos, Youtube gets paid.
But that's beside the point. I'm aware that record companies and artists have taken these steps. But with so few people buying music these days, including the use of iTunes, it falls into the same category. Universal, Roadrunner, EMI, Sony...these guys do not make money if you're sitting blasting a song from Youtube. And let's be fair, that's what they want. Your goddamned money.
Wikipedia has gotten involved in this because, should the legislation be passed, it is going to take sites like Wikipedia, DamnLOL, ICanHazCheezeburger, Youtube, and everything else that you can add to, with it. And let's be fair here, we don't live in the Dark Ages of the Internet anymore (about fifteen years ago), where the only thing you could do was sit in an AOL chat room and think nothing of the fact the dude might not be twelve years old and live halfway across town, and instead might be a peadophile wanting to get into your pants. On a selflish note for you and I, this means that the Internet would become the place it used to be. Do your homework, play the games that you were restricted to playing, maybe sit in a dodgy chat room that crashed every five minutes and disconnect again. We don't live in that age anymore. For all we claim that we have nothign to do on the Internet, without these sites, we actually don't have anything to do. Do you read FanFiction? Do you go ontp Youtube? Do you use websites where the point is to make you laugh? Yes. You do. Maybe not to all of these, but you do. So you are back at square one.
"This Does Not Affect Me, I'm Not American"
With all due respect, please remove your head from your fornicating rectum. Yes. It does. Allow me to explain a little more clearly (and possibly get my ass sued by the American government for the use of images that I "pirated" off Google)
It's already started.
Who's heard of MegaUpload?
I'll admit to having used it at one point. A few days ago, MegaUpload all but disappeared thanks to a "DNS Takedown Request" - which is really the government in a country saying "screw you, take it down or we're going to sue you for every last penny you have", making it unavailable in a number of countries, which I'm pretty sure included the United Kingdom. Law enforcement got involved and declared it a "rogue site". But it's not just about "rogue sites". But now I start to reiterate myself.
It's at this point some smart-ass will leave a comment along the lines of "move the servers to Japan or something, and block the sites in the States". Well, honestly, you can't even do that.
It costs a lot of money to shift all these servers halfway across the planet. We don't live in a world where everything is wireless. All our data on Facebook is still stored in many, many huge towers in an office in the USA. So if you get all that done, you still need to create the firewalls in the USA to stop Americans getting onto these websites. Which would be pointless, for where there's a hole in a security system, a hacker will find their way through it. The Leonardo DiCaprio move "Catch Me If You Can" is based on a true story. The guys in the MI5, the FBI, even some of the fraud investigators? They've been caught doing it. They know their ins and outs. But where they fill a hole, there's another one they missed.
SOPA & PIPA, are, essentially, designed to stop you doing what you want on the Internet. Hell, it's more than likely out to stop you using the Internet, end of discussion. Why? Because this blog is my intellectual property. Because my Facebook, with photographs of me and my friends, are my intellectual property if I am in them or was taking them because I had a hand in creating the shot. The videos on my Youtube account were created by me. It's easy for someone to steal them. We already have laws in place for copyright protection. We don't need this as well.
I live in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Almost four thousand miles away from Washington District County, United States of America. But if this goes through, I can - and probably will - lose everything I have on the Internet. And so will you. The Internet is not a country-specific thing.
Do you still feel unaffected?
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