A quick introduction to the Stop Online Piracy Act:
According to Rep. Smith's website, “IP theft costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs. The Stop Online Piracy Act specifically targets foreign websites primarily dedicated to illegal activity or foreign websites that market themselves as such. The bill ensures that profits from America's innovations go to American innovators.”
But opponents of the bill suggest it is unlikely to do what it is designed to do — and highly likely to result in troubling unintended consequences. Put simply, the bill would enable the U.S. government to block Internet content for very specious reasons. Sites that “enable or facilitate” copyright infringement could be shut down just for that enabling or facilitating function. In other words, a site like YouTube could be shut down just because one of its users posted content that infringes copyright laws. As critics have pointed out, that's akin to punishing a car company because a car user crashed his vehicle into another person's vehicle.
We don't need any other reason to fight SOPA but the fact that it is trying to sneak censorship in the back door. In the phrase "block content for very specious reasons," the "for very specious reasons" part is unnecessary. Government attempts to block information for any reason should be suspect. Never assume that attempts to censor will stop just because we successfully fight them off -- they're always going to be in there trying, especially when a new medium comes along that couldn't have been imagined by the founders. TV should be no more subject to government standards than newspapers are, but the FCC isn't going away anytime soon. And the Internet should be as protected by the First Amendment as any other forum, yet here we are.
