[freshfoodie]

The idea of internet censorship has been floating around since the House and Senate introduced bills (SOPA And PIPA) to stop internet piracy of copyrighted items like movies and music. While I think this is a good idea in theory, I don't want some Washington bureaucrat deciding which websites are "promoting piracy" and telling me that I can't access it. For instance, many You Tube videos include music and lyrics. Because of this they could decide that the music is being pirated and block US citizens from viewing either all or part of the You Tube website. Who would make these decisions? How do you feel about these bills? Are you for or against?

[jason]

I'm against it. They have the power to take down websites already, just looked at what happened to megaupload.com. And he was not even in the United States. Bills like this have been proposed in the past, although not to the extreme, and I'm sure it is only a matter of time before something gets passed.

Between bills like this and NDAA which did pass, I'm wondering if Edgar Cayce was right. America will turn into more of an old style Russia, while Russia will turn into a more freedom of America.

[ComingUpDaisy]

Quite honestly the idea of it scares the crap out of me. That some government agency can decide for us what we can and cannot see on the internet is nuts.

[naturelady]

I saw a really interesting blog post this morning about how many entertainment companies have actually been downloading pirated software. Hypocrisy exposed! And, as the post says, then they turn around and press charges against others doing the same thing.

[freshfoodie]

That was really interesting Naturelady. It is always great when hypocrisy can be exposed. It does not surprise me in the least that there are people in these companies who pirate movies and music, it would surprise me more if their weren't.

[Paisley]

The thing that does me in the most is when various companies went out and copied vintage post cards, illustrations, classic texts and the like and put them on the web. Then they try to claim copyright to stuff that wasn't their material in the first place.

[strawberry]

I'm really glad that this bill was defeated. It would have put too much power in the hands of the government. But I think piracy is a huge issue that does need to be addressed somehow.

[freshfoodie]

I don't think that piracy can be stopped without severely hampering our civil liberties. In order to police it someone would have to decide what constitutes piracy. I think this is a case where we need to police ourselves and not rely on the government to do it for us.