The 7 Closet: A022 Digital Blog

The coolest stuff from the internet? Nah, but we're glad you think so.

Censorship Sucks

Hi there. Unless someone thought this was so well written that they printed it out and handed it to you, you are currently using the internet. Yep, it doesn’t matter if you are reading this on your phone, iPad, computer or TV and it doesn’t matter if you are reading it on Tumblr, Facebook, Google Reader or Instapaper… you are using the internet. That might seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many aspects of our lives require the internet without you even noticing.

Thaaats great, the internet is awesome, so what?  Well, Congress is considering 2 bills called PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which, if passed, are probably going to affect you and the internet pretty profoundly. (In case you forgot how a bill becomes a law, Schoolhouse Rock to the rescue) At the most basic level, these two acts used together will give entertainment companies the right to sue any website and any ISP in order to completely block that site from search engines, browsers, apps and everything if they post or link to copyrighted material. Okay, so that doesn’t sound so bad, I mean we have to protect copyrights, right?

How about if a user on Facebook records a video of themselves lip syncing to Tubthumping and posts it on a friend’s wall? If these Acts are passed, the record company that owns the rights to that song could sue Facebook, even going so far as taking the site offline for that single video. If you are Facebook, how do you keep yourself from getting sued? You either spend billions in legal battles or you censor your users. Which one do you think is easier/cheaper?

Well Facebook has millions in the bank, they can afford a lawsuit now and then. But what about back in 2004 when they were just getting started? What about the thousands of internet startups being launched by entrepreneurs every day in the US? Do you think they have money for a legal battle? No way. As our team is launching our first real startup product, we are operating on such small amounts of money that if we go over a bandwidth allotment in a month, it is a serious blow to our budget. If one of our users managed to get us sued, we wouldn’t even be able to afford enough lawyer time to respond to tell them we are broke.

PIPA and PROTECT IP are cleverly named, but are going to stifle innovation online and will definitely lead to censorship on your favorite sites. Not to mention the number of people with PhDs and giant brains who tell us that it will fundamentally effect the overall security of the internet as a whole.

So, check out ProtectInnovation.com for how you can join nearly every technology and internet company out there and speak out against censorship. And check out the video below for a glimpse at these two acts:

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

  1. misskatiemo reblogged this from acafourek
  2. acafourek reblogged this from a022 and added:
    We over at A022 Digital (and basically every company...operates online)
  3. a022 posted this