I've had many occasions in the past years to appreciate the flourishing of the Internet, more so now that I live out in the boondocks where it is resource library, world access, personal communication conduit, and my means to tell stories. I am grateful and aware of its value daily.
How wonderful it is to be able to write and publish these posts every week with no one looking over my shoulder, with no one warning me I can't say this or that, with no one telling me the advertisers or the editor or the government won't approve.
And how amazing it is to push a few buttons and be able to research any topic that comes to mind! I just took a peek at my recent browser history and found searches for shrimp recipes, metric conversion, gardenia culture, Spanish translation, Rocky and Bullwinkle, HDMI cables, weather forecasts, medicinal uses of coconut oil, the Hula Bowl, and how to hack into a new DVD player. To me, that's heaven.
On Wednesday, January 18th, I clicked on a link sent by a friend, a Wikipedia article about dance cards, which we are learning about for an upcoming entreamigos fundraiser. Did you try to access Wikipedia, Mozilla, Wired, or Wordpress on Wednesday? If you did, you were a witness to history. On Wikipedia, for example, a dark screen appeared with a short message on it explaining that they and many other sites across the Internet were blacked out for twenty-four hours in protest of two bills being considered by the United States Congress.
Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge, it said.
I went exploring to find out what this was all about. The bills are Sopa and Pipa: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. I did my research. Obviously, there are serious problems with piracy sites and sites that do not honor copyright law. Something should be done, possibly.
That said, I agree with the conclusion of millions of others. As with so very many Congressional bills, these acts appear to be badly written, too vague, too long, too punitive to the wrong parties. They are overreaching and unrealistic attempts that have the real potential to stifle creative development and expression. They threaten the dynamic organism that is the worldwide web.
Over 75,000 websites joined the blackout protest on January 18th.
The Internet is free speech. It must be protected from financial manipulation and governmental control. It's being stifled already in China and Iran because it is too effective a way to innovate, communicate, and criticize. Anything that is done toward the purpose of protecting intellectual property rights on the Internet must be accomplished very carefully and very thoughtfully. Otherwise, it's flat-out censorship.
I encourage you to look into this yourself if you're interested. Countless articles have been written on both sides of the issue. I'm including a link to the BBC coverage, and any browser search of Sopa and Pipa will lead you to others.
To me, this is important stuff.
Images of the Website Blackout
More Info and How to Participate
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. W. Somerset Maugham
The thing about the internet is: it is the catalyst that spawned real freedom of speech. Oh we probably said what we thought in days-of-yore but there was always a red pen lurking in the background to obliterate a word or two, or to cut out our tongues. The internet has allowed a certain amount of anonymity in execution and it has also facilitated a great deal of platforms for storing what we feel the need to say, accumulate or share. No money changes hands… giving is free, taking is free. I think “THEY” have finally noticed that THEY are losing out on a goldmine and have indicated they wish to enter and control. We DO need to do whatever we can to keep our thoughts, our words, our knowledge and our little blogs free for as long as we can. I can hardly imagine for how long, but so far it is free… something like our Magicjack Phone which amazes me… and SKYPE. Let’s do what we can to keep Big Brother out of the playing field. Thanks Wikipedia for initiating the first play, and to Candice for reminding us of what we have and what we don’t need to lose.
Posted by: Gretchen Goodliffe | January 20, 2012 at 05:06 PM