If you are on the internet today, you will find a curious thing occurring. All over the vastness of the interwebs, sites small and great are making a point. Some have blacked their logos, some redirect to a dark site, some have changed their front pages to a noir-styled declaration. All of this, the color of black, the non-functionality, the inconvenience... it is all to make a point. A simple point.
This is the internet of SOPA.
Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Google, DeviantArt, WordPress, Livejournal, all the sites you know and love can be taken from you with a simple accusation of copyright infringement. The words can be stripped from your own posts, left to rot in the caches of uncleaned histories, never to be seen again. Images you create because you love a character in a book or film can be torn away from the world. All melodramatic, yes, but true. The internet will be dark and a dark place with no information or ideas, no sharing of art and thought, even the trolls would find themselves adrift.
To some, it may seem a small thing. To some, it may seem out of proportion. Perhaps, perhaps. However when you look at something, anything, that involves the internet you cannot simply look at what it is doing, what it will be doing and what it can be doing. You have to look at how it will make things change and evolve and you simply cannot predict the ways in which the internet can react. The people that make it up ARE the people of the world and as such are as varied and vast as human beings can be.
America is a country of freedom. The internet is pure, concentrated freedom. If you wanted to you could create a world of your own. We cannot give up our freedom, not with the rules SOPA has laid down. SOPA is censorship, it is anti-freedom. If you do not make your voice heard now, you may not HAVE a voice. Take pride in your freedom and protect it with everything you have.
No comments:
Post a Comment