SOPA AND PIPA!

SOPA AND PIPA! (Frazer Chronicle)

Wow, looks like I miss-spelled the heading of this blog at the most, or maybe I miss-understood some of what I read in preparation. Either way, bare with me, the message is strong and important, and actually a conservative view. Yesterday, during my driving adventure around the city of Green Bay, the front tires on my truck almost got the wobbles, you know, just like when a motorcycle is about to lose it, and crash and burn.

I was listening to the local N.P.R. talk show and kept hear these 2 terms, SOPA AND PIPA, and of course I thought that the talk was about 2 chicks named Sopa and Pipa. Foreign yes, interesting, probably, sexy.....well sure, with Spanish names like Sopa and Pipa. Imagine my shock and disappointment when the next thing the N.P.R. guy says is "computer," and what SOPA AND PIPA really meant, I was "wobbled," almost!

I watch those bicycle or motorcycle videos at least 3 or 4 times a week, when, traveling at high speeds the front wheel starts almost a death knell wobble, the driver is powerless to correct the wobble, and the bike either flips, ejects the driver, or runs head-long off the road. For me, the wobble wheels ranks 2nd. to somebody getting tased, Tru-T.V. is by far the best trailer trash channel on television, great fun.

Anyway.....back to the "meat and bones" of my blog, SOPA and PIPA and how they could  effect the lives of many, many U.S. citizens. I always get nervous whenever I read or hear that technology experts are discussing any kind of proposed legislation to either stop a much used process, or to protect the users, or simply to poke their nose into an issue to usually secure or put limitations  on the service.

SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act and a sister bill, PIPA, Protect IP Act would seek to minimise the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected materials like The Pirate Bay. While there is validity to the thinking behind the acts, entrepreneurs, legal scholars and free speech activists worry about the consequences of these bills for the architecture of the Internet.

I simple laymen terms, "I'm all for simple," what this legislation would do, is to make it easier for the Federal Government to monitor users and in fact reject some of the access to  Internet information that users now enjoy. Any blunting of information, any dilation to the access for knowledge that we now enjoy is a feeble attempt to control by government.

There are 2 things at work here, an inability by Internet users to police themselves and an ever increasing desire by the federal government to control. Look, the Internet, the information gained, the effect it has on people's  everyday life is invaluable. If knowledge is power, then a person's computer, and the access to the Internet it gives the user must be left basically unfettered.

I am in no way advocating that I have the answers, in fact any answers to the problems that I see just around the corner with regards to access on the Internet. I do know this, the copy write laws in the United States are a travesty, just a few years ago, the copy write law went from 75 years to 125 years. What.....how can that be, most writings from a hundred years ago don't even apply today, and are used basically for research.

When I research for a book, I always use 3 sources  before I will add an content into a book, yet I can only use 25% of what was said in a paragraph. I write history, so all of the authors I might quote are dead, some as long as a hundred years. Trying to track down descendants for a signature from them, so that I can freely use information is sometimes worse then the research.

The same thing will happen with the Internet, if we, as users do not monitor what government is contemplating. Look what is happening and has happened in China.