Catarina's World

Should the US government have the power to shut down web sites world wide? Or do you agree with Wikipedia and Google that the proposed bills amount to Chinese style online censorship? Devote 2 minutes to watching an informative video about the bills:

If congress pass the bills, anyone posting a home video online with a song playing in the background could in theory be accused of piracy and their site shut down. The Obama administration has stated it's not in favour of the proposed legislation since it threatens an innovative and open internet. So if worse comes to worse, the president could presumably veto it? Some members of congress however, are keen on the bills in order to please Hollywood and the musical industy. 

Would the bills be the end of internet as we know it?

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the bills: ""They put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won't have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn't being infringed.

'Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won't show up in major search engines. And, Sopa and Pipa build a framework for future restrictions and suppression. Proponents of Sopa have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy". 

According to Jimmy Wales, "The bill is so over broad and so badly written that it's going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don't have anything to do with stopping piracy."

Sopa and Pipa actually propose that anyone found guilty of streaming copyrighted content without permission 10 or more times within six months should go to jail.

Would Sopa and Pipa completely change social media networks like Linkedin and Facebook because they would need to police everything their members post? Will online freedom of speech be severely resticted by the bills? Or do you agree with Robert Murdoch who has complained about the White House not supporting the most extreme elements of the bills? Do you want to keep the internet as it is or should it be censored world-wide by the US government? 

Video: Al Jazeera English – You Tube