If you have access to the internet you are probably familiar with some of the attention the the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act (SOPA & PIPA)have been receiving, however you may not be aware of how these bills would effect your interaction with the internet. The following is pirated re-posted  from a Google explanation of what SOPA and PIPA would mean to you:

More about SOPA and PIPA

Members of Congress are trying to do the right thing by going after pirates and counterfeiters but SOPA and PIPA are the wrong way to do it.

1. SOPA and PIPA would censor the Web
The U.S. government could order the blocking of sites using methods similar to those employed by China. Among other things, search engines could be forced to delete entire websites from their search results. That’s why 41 human rights organizations and 110 prominent law professors have expressed grave concerns about the bills.

2. SOPA and PIPA would be job-killers because they would create a new era of uncertainty for American business
Law-abiding U.S. internet companies would have to monitor everything users link to or upload or face the risk of time-consuming litigation. That’s why AOL, EBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga wrote a letter to Congress saying these bills “pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation.” It’s also why 55 of America’s most successful venture capitalists expressed concern that PIPA “would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness”. More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation”.

3. SOPA and PIPA wouldn’t stop piracy
To make matters worse, SOPA and PIPA won’t even work. The censorship regulations written into these bills won’t shut down pirate sites. These sites will just change their addresses and continue their criminal activities, while law-abiding companies will suffer high penalties for breaches they can’t possibly control.

There are effective ways to combat foreign “rogue” websites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting, while preserving the innovation and dynamism that have made the Internet such an important driver of American economic growth and job creation. Congress should consider alternatives like the OPEN Act, which takes targeted and focused steps to cut off the money supply from foreign pirate sites without making US companies censor the Web.

 

The best analogy I have heard to explain these bills is ” like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”, sure the nut will get cracked but you’ll pretty much be destroying what you were trying to get to in the process. Small websites such as Dardanos.com (seriously we are 2 people and a hamster on a wheel running our server) rely on some of the methods which under the new restriction would be called piracy in our daily operations. A lot of our website traffic comes from other sites reviewing products that we carry and using our images. We like that….other sites driving business to our site is a good thing. Under the new restrictions something as simple as re-posting a picture of an LOL cat to your Facebook page would result in that image being removed or censored and is committing an act of piracy that Facebook would be punished for as well.If you would like to keep small internet businesses thriving and keep the same internet freedoms you have enjoyed so far CLICK HERE to tell Congress not to censor your internet.