The Internet is Protected from SOPA and PIPA

 Kaitlyn DeShon

 "Congress Indefinitely Postpones 'SOPA, PIPA'"

North County Times

Friday, January 20, 2012  

Jim Abrams Associated Press


http://www.nctimes.com/news/national/nation-congress-indefinitely-postpones-sopa-pipa/article_656197c4-5e54-5140-b7a6-4c965f0264c0.html

     This article talks about how Congress was debating on whether or not to pass the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA, and the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. Congress was responding to the Internet petitions that happened on large sites, like Google and Wikipedia. When these sites heard about the online piracy preventing acts, they protested by shutting down their sites for a day, or in Google's case, organizing a petition drive that attracted over 7 million people. These acts changed the minds of several important Senators and Representatives that had originally been co-sponsoring the bills. The petitions and protests of the millions of angry citizens caused Congress to indefinitely postpone what to do with SOPA and PIPA. Several representatives have suggested other methods of dealing with online piracy, which costs the country millions of dollars a year.
     This event connects to what we are learning in class because SOPA and PIPA, which are government acts  enacted in order to prevent further online piracy, which is illegal and costs the country millions of dollars a year. This event parallels the Tea Act, the Townshend Acts, the Quartering Act, Stamp Act, and Proclamation of 1763. In these historical events, the British government put into force the acts in order to gain money that was lost. The colonists protested all these acts because they thought of these as unfair and went against their rights, as did the modern people against PIPA and SOPA. This is shown when in the article, it says, "...a loose affiliation of hackers known as 'Anonymous' shut down Justice Department websites for several hours and hacked the site of the Motion Picture Association of America after federal officials issued an indictment against Megaupload.com, one of the world's biggest file-sharing sites." (Abrams NCTimes). This shows that after a major act, the people got angry, and even got very, very dirty. They hacked into government websites and shut them down just to prove the point that they were angry. This relates to the events that led up to the Revolutionary War because the Patriots, who were very angry at the British government, decided to get dirty and violent with their protests, injuring British soldiers and tax collectors. In other words, people as closely connected to the British government as they could get in the colonies.
     This connects to my life because I have had to deal with SOPA and PIPA myself. I use the Internet every day, and I was there when Wikipedia shut down their site in protest. It affected me, as well as nearly everyone at school and in my life. I have seen it on television, over the Internet, as well as simply face-to-face complaining about how "horrible" SOPA and PIPA is. Overall, this connects to my life because it directly affected it.
     I believe that this will show Congress and the government just how powerful the Internet is, and how powerful the people can become when Congress decides to change it. This can effect our future because our nation's government is all about not one aspect of life being monopolized, or becoming too powerful. There are three branches of government because of this. In the economy, the government will step in in order to make sure no company becomes a monopoly, or even close to it. This could be the same mindset for the Internet. If they realize that the Internet has become too powerful, then they could pass more bills trying to control it. Therefore, this can effect our future very much.