How do you feel about SOPA and PIPA?

I honestly don’t see what the big fuss about it is really.

It is an attempt by the entertainment industry to get control of all their copyrighted material. But it is so loosely worded that any copyright owner could shut down a website (in the US) by getting a judge to agree. (Lawyers love loosely worded laws that can be twisted however they want.)

Just so you know how ridiculous it could be, RIGHT NOW on the very first page of ‘NEW PHOTOS’ on Fun Advice are a picture of Elmo (Sesame Street) and 2 pictures of Bam Bam (Hanna-Barbera), all of which are copyrighted, and any of which (under SOPA and PIPA) could get FunAdvice shut down. (Page 2012 has Tweety Bird, page 6000 has Star Bucks and Raider Nation.) NONE of those harms any company, NO ONE is getting any money for them, but if (picking a random social site) Xanga had a beef with FunAdvice they could get a judge to shut us down (in the US only since it is a US law).

The problem with laws is that most are written by special interest groups and are so lengthy and complex that lawmakers depend on short summations (provided by the same special interest groups) to understand what they are voting on, … or … just take the word of big money donators as to which pending laws are good.

I don’t like it one bit and its a big deal here in the United States. The bill is trying to pass and it says that of someone uploads any copyrighted material into any website, that uploaded is now a criminal on a federal level. Not only will the uploaded be charged, but the website host will be taken down. So if you think about it….. there goes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. The government claims this will help stop online piracy but we all know thats BS.

Hope it passes because I honestly don’t care.