but just for a day and I think you should strongly consider doing the same, it’s REAL easy. ( http://www.techi.com/2012/01/website-owners-heres-how-to-protest-sopa-on-january-18th/ )
There are two bills before Congress. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).
Many large internet companies are pledging to “go dark” at their website to protest these bills on Wed., Jan. 18 – The list includes, AOL, EBay, Facebook, PayPal, Twitter, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Wikimedia Foundation, Foursquare, Mozilla (FireFox), Boing Boing, Zynga.
In vocal opposition are: Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Go Daddy, Google, Creative Commons, Kickstarter, OpenDNS, Tumblr, ICanHasCheezburger, MediaTemple, Square, Craigslist, and many many more including the White House.
Now you can add SIHomeTours.com to the list. It probably won’t make a splash anyone will notice, but, we’ll stand up just the same.
SOPA/PIPA are fraught with problems, likely because they were written by the entertainment industry and people who do not understand technology or the Internet. If you happen to be in that camp, please trust me on this. I’ve been a professional consultant in the computer industry since 1986. I’ve worked for Apple Inc. and presented for Adobe Systems Inc., but this not about me. SOPA/PIPA is a bad solution to a perceived problem.
Matter of fact, I’d think that SIHomeTours would stand to benefit from passage of SOPA and PIPA, but these bills are so bad that I don’t want to live in that world.
HOW DOES THIS EFFECT ME?
As a real estate broker or agent, you advertise on the web. As I understand it, should someone decide that you might have used a copyrighted song, video, lyric, or photo in your advertisements, not only would your entire website be shut down, but you are at great risk of a lawsuit. Not only that, your provider would be shut down and heavily fined.
Even worse, let’s say you simply LINKED to a questionable site. YOU and the provider would be shut down and sued.
In all likelihood, to protect yourself from these events, you, or your provider, will have to buy powerful and very expensive filtering software to scan the content of videos and audio to search for copyrighted material. Either way, I see your cost skyrocketing.
HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING?
Since AppleWriter and the very first BorderBund Game for the APPLE ][ Computer, every copy protection scheme has been broken. Once something is in digital form, it’s out there. Copy protection only keeps honest people honest. And honestly, most people are honest. Digital album sales grew 19% in 2011. I think you’ll find record companies are doing just fine.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2011-07-06-music-sales-jump-this-year_n.htm
SOPA & PIPA are much weaker and do not employ copy protection. They give control of the domain systems to entertainment companies, like Sony. So if someone at a foreign company like Sony was to determine (probably by scanning the web with sophisticated automated programs, called bots.) that SIHomeTours was hosting questionable material, they could turn off the Domain Name. http://SIHomeTours.com would no longer function. This would hurt your business as well as mine. Honest people trying to make an honest living.
BUT! This would do NOTHING to stop hackers and pirates. With a simple lookup, anyone could simply use the IP address of the same server to access the content. Try it!! –> http://70.250.105.51
The bill is toothless against everyone but the innocent, regular guy and small business person.
I’ve gone on long enough but I hope you see the picture that YOUR business and mine are in great jeopardy because we rely on the internet. SOPA/PIPA would place control of the Internet in the USA in the hands of the Government and Foreign Media Companies…the same companies who tried to stop VCR’s and cassette tape machines.
READ MORE:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1808216/remain-diligent-sopa-and-pipa-must-be-squashed-not-changed
Short video:
http://vimeo.com/31100268
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/opinion/firewall-law-could-infringe-on-free-speech.html?_r=3
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/14/white-house-sopa-pipa_n_1206347.html
In closing I urge you to have a look at the video, spend a few minutes studying the issues and then call your Congress person(s) to politely voice your disgust. As of this writing, I understand that Senator Durbin of Illinois, (202)224-2152 is a Co-Sponsor of the bill and should he continue to support SOPA/PIPA, we should let him know that he will be voted out of office by an embarrassing landslide.
ACTION:
Call your (other) Congress Persons:
http://www.tumblr.com/protect-the-net
…and go dark on the 18th.
Best,
/kelly thomas
SIHomeTours.com
p.s. Keep the US Government out of the Internet.
Related articles
- SOPA and PIPA bills affect RRS writers and readers (rationalresponders.com)
- SOPA/PIPA will destroy the internet as we know it! (goandplay.wordpress.com)
- What I told my congressman, a sponsor of SOPA (RexBlog.com)
- SOPA, Freedom, And The Invisible War (techcrunch.com)
WHAT TO DO NOW?