There are many voices coming out against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Internet Protocol Act. SOPA and PIPA, despite being different bills, are in fact the same problem merely viewed from different angles. They both restrict internet freedom and neither is better than the other.
Under SOPA, youtube could be shut down just for a person uploading themselves singing to a song if the song is playing in the background. That could be considered copyright infringement. Tumblr? Post something that someone complains about being copyrighted, it’s down. This is not like the previous laws, wherein a copyrighted media/link/picture/etc would be blacked out or removed due to a copyright violation. If one ever searches for something on youtube, chances are you have come across a video that was removed for copyright violation. Now imagine youtube itself shut down over one of those.
PIPA would institute Domain Name System blocking. Under this system, if you type in the name of an offending website, your search engine would be unable to locate it. It would appear as though the site did not exist. The cataclysmic potential of this cannot be understated. This technology would break the functionality of DNS itself. By the nature of Uniform resource locator (URL) design, all DNS hosted on servers should be identical. With this implemented, US servers would have records different from their counterparts in other countries, thereby making URLs less universal and forcing drastic changes on the internet infrastructure.
There are many resources detailing why SOPA/PIPA are terrible ideas. Today, do your part and please help voice your opposition. Write a letter, phone your congressman, put up a facebook alert, but do something so Washington and the various backers of SOPA/PIPA such as the US Chamber of Commerce take notice.
Thank you. Good Night and Good Luck.