With the current support for SOPA being testing and as more and more online giants put their weight behind the opposition of SOPA, I think that its time people said where do they fit in the whole SOPA arguement.
What is SOPA
Firstly if you dont know what SOPA is its the Stop Online Piracy Act that US congress are planning to turn into legislation, and in essence it makes sharing information online a bit more difficult, as under SOPA any websites showing copyrighted content without the owners permission will be liable for the infringement. However apart from that bit of the act the rest of it makes sense.
We need more protection from online pirates, especially in todays society where the majority of people who work in IT, particulary as web developer, designers etc carry out a lot of copyright theft, taking code from sites passing it off as their own, stealing designs. Basically in the last 10 years there has been an influx of companies claiming they can do something when they cant, they get awarded work they shouldn't and simply use the internet to find the coding they need, then pass it off as their own work. THIS MUST STOP.
Where Do I Stand
I am in support of the essence of SOPA in we need better controls to protect our hard work, yet at the same time we do not want sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit and others to be blamed for hosting copyrighted materials. This in my view is the key, we need to all work together and if a site hosts copyrighted material, they should take it down as soon as they are made aware of it, and be willing to pass details of the people on to authorities, after all civil protection doesn't give you the right to break the law.
So will I be bringing my websites down on Wednesday, No. But I do support this action in part at least.
If you have not heard of SOPA or want to know more about it, check out my other blog article on SOPA http://notjustajax.blogspot.com/2011/11/stop-online-piracy-act-sopa.html
Thanks
Sean J Connolly
FaceBook Me
BuzzProperties.co.uk - Online Property Sales and Letting
Showing posts with label SOPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SOPA. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Friday, 18 November 2011
Stop Online Piracy Act - SOPA
OK so you may have heard all the hype recently about the Stop Online Privacy Act or SOPA being discussed. First off the main thing to remember is that this act will only be in force in the USA, although the idea of it is good to protect peoples online IP and privacy, it is also solely aimed at protecting American online privacy, nowhere else.
The basis of the act is simply is will give additional powers to the US attorney to combat privacy from websites that are hosted outside the USA, this means that anysite hosting or offering information on how to infringe copyright will be a target, such sites includes torrent sites (hosting illegal movies, games, software, etc) and sites giving away source code for copyrighted materials.
Now I fully agree with the idea of protecting peoples IP and what this means for the world, I am not fully on the side of the Web giants on this one. It appears to me that the have not fully read and understood the new act, namely the fact that the act is not seeking to be a censorship of content, but simply to protect what people have created.
If we take youtube as a prime example, there a literally millions of videos on there, and not all of them are on there legally. Now whilst Google owns and hosts this site, it is Google that takes the wrap for this, yet under this new act Google will have additional powers to not only take the normal steps to remove the content, but can now take additional action outside the US on the people who uploaded the content and the ones who actually broke the IP.
So what I am saying is thay in my view this act is not intended to be a censorship act, more a protect the US act from foreigners. Now this is where I see the problem, we have a major organisation for keeping world peace, known as the UN or United Nations, it is in my view that there should be a higher act in place to protect everyone from IP theft, not just the US. Whilst I do understand that the US congress can only enforce US law, we all need to work to stop privacy and need to realise that there are lots of things online that are stolen, such as
What I think needs to happen is that the major web giants, Google, FaceBook, AOL, etc need to work together with all countries in order to come up with a more global act to protect their and everyone elses IP. After all its unfair to blame Google, FaceBook, AOL or anyone else for one of their users posting links to illegal content.
So in short the act is a step in the right direction, but we need a more universal solution that covers all countries and not just the US, after all the internet and more specifically the World Wide Web is global (and a british invention).
Thanks
Sean J Connolly
FaceBook Me
BuzzProperties.co.uk - Online Property Sales and Letting
The basis of the act is simply is will give additional powers to the US attorney to combat privacy from websites that are hosted outside the USA, this means that anysite hosting or offering information on how to infringe copyright will be a target, such sites includes torrent sites (hosting illegal movies, games, software, etc) and sites giving away source code for copyrighted materials.
Now I fully agree with the idea of protecting peoples IP and what this means for the world, I am not fully on the side of the Web giants on this one. It appears to me that the have not fully read and understood the new act, namely the fact that the act is not seeking to be a censorship of content, but simply to protect what people have created.
If we take youtube as a prime example, there a literally millions of videos on there, and not all of them are on there legally. Now whilst Google owns and hosts this site, it is Google that takes the wrap for this, yet under this new act Google will have additional powers to not only take the normal steps to remove the content, but can now take additional action outside the US on the people who uploaded the content and the ones who actually broke the IP.
So what I am saying is thay in my view this act is not intended to be a censorship act, more a protect the US act from foreigners. Now this is where I see the problem, we have a major organisation for keeping world peace, known as the UN or United Nations, it is in my view that there should be a higher act in place to protect everyone from IP theft, not just the US. Whilst I do understand that the US congress can only enforce US law, we all need to work to stop privacy and need to realise that there are lots of things online that are stolen, such as
- movies
- games
- software
- software code
- documents
What I think needs to happen is that the major web giants, Google, FaceBook, AOL, etc need to work together with all countries in order to come up with a more global act to protect their and everyone elses IP. After all its unfair to blame Google, FaceBook, AOL or anyone else for one of their users posting links to illegal content.
So in short the act is a step in the right direction, but we need a more universal solution that covers all countries and not just the US, after all the internet and more specifically the World Wide Web is global (and a british invention).
Find out more about the act Stop Online Piracy ACT - SOPA
Thanks
Sean J Connolly
FaceBook Me
BuzzProperties.co.uk - Online Property Sales and Letting
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