Cyberpunks Are At Attention

Recently some of you may have heard about the Wikipedia blackout. They were protesting something called SOPA. An act to stop online piracy. This whole piracy thing is getting out of hand if you ask me. I mean you could say that Limewire was taken down as censorship because taking down Limewire won't stop P2P from being harmless. What they're after is a way to stop pirated songs, or movies, or whatever from moving but P2P itself is harmless and taking down Limewire was pointless. Now it's leading to the possible censorship of websites that might infringe copyright. What that means is even if you're not directly infringing copyright they can put an order to shut down your site immediately just like in that movie "I Am Number Four" where they were hacking and taking sites down. That means they don't need direct justification for erasing a site except that it might be because an image was used. Even as simple as a blog image. My blog is full of free images from the net but I am in no way infringing copyright and I already know it for a fact. But that wouldn't stop an act like that from allowing corporations from doing it. That would destroy blogging as we know it. That would also destroy internet freedom. If such an act were to go into power then that would be the start of the "real" cyberpunks taking back the internet. You know those movies where the cyberpunks save the world, well life could be like that if they keep trying to censor things. This could affect Youtube too. There are videos, including my own, that use songs, and now they have a technology that reads the song and reports it back to the corporation that owns the song. The only reason my video isn't taken down is because I'm not assuming to be the owner of the song and I'm not trying to make money from the video directly. You want to know what real censorship is like? Look at China. They have a completely censored internet. People there have to use VPN just to see American Youtube videos not allowed there. You know musicians and movie directors and even porn creators are furious about this uprising of free information being hosted everywhere for people to watch or listen to but maybe it's not for them to control. Maybe they could use it to their advantage if they knew how to make even more money. I don't agree with censorship because it could affect other things indirectly, even Wikipedia, if they felt there was too much information about someone or something out in the open. Do you want a future like something out of "Johnny Mnemonic"? If not then we must protect freedom because then the only freedom left would be VR and that's a bit ahead of our time. In a way our news could even be censored. What this could allow is any corporation to whitewash our reality. I don't like the thought of corporate rule but if cyberpunk movies predict it then it might be inevitable. But even still, internet censorship is where the line is drawn for everyone. Piracy should be made clearer. If I download a song I'm not hurting the economy. Now I know some people like those convenient tube sites that have videos available to view without charging. They have this uncanny knack of having the most amazing selection. They're like libraries of awesomeness. I don't know how you protect against piracy but those sites aren't really doing anything anyone hasn't thought of. It's like accusing teens of making illegal porn for taking nude pictures of each other with camera enabled phones. And then teens get put in prison for it. That is ludicrous! Tube sites are a different matter, and I say it shouldn't matter because if people would rather watch a less than stellar copy of a movie then they won't get the blu-ray quality. If people download a song they won't get the actual CD so let them I say. A song for a dollar or a song shared; it's not a big deal except for those that feel they're losing money. But what about Hulu? It's o.k. because they only show movies with expired copyrights? What about new shows? I have seen clone sites and they have amazing selection. If you ask me I don't think it's worth it to keep people from downloading shared info. What will keep people from downloading is the economy getting better. When more jobs are available more people will make more money to spend on goods. During a recession it could cause war so let it be.
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Guest Commentator HARVESTER OF SORROW says: "Wow this is so exciting boss. I feel like Christian Slater in 'Pump Up The Volume'!"