¡°Student warning, do your homework early, Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!¡± Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia tweeted. Wales stated that in protest against the anti-online piracy legislation, Wikipedia will be blacking out for 24 hours starting on Wednesday in US time.
The bad law in question, according to abc.net.au, is the infamous SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) that has been circulating around the internet for the past month. The act which is currently debated by the US House of Representatives, has ¡°won the backing of Hollywood, the music industry, the Business Software Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers and the US chamber of commerce¡±. This is due to the fact that SOPA will allow the US government to censor the internet to such extremes that it could be compared to Chinas.
According to the American Institute of Policy Innovation, it has been estimated that approximately $58 billion worth of material is illegally distributed by online pirates every year. They claim that this affects movie studios and music companies, who are the main victims of online piracy. What makes SOPA notorious is that it could make internet service providers as well as search engines accountable for any terms of copyright infringement.
What this means is that if a webpage that is indexed on Google contains links to a download of copyrighted material, it would be Google¡¯s responsibility to stop indexing that site or they could be held responsible by court issues. This could result in millions of websites being taken off the internet just for containing links of copyrighted material. Denizens of the internet also claim that it is possible that even ¡°covers¡± of a song on YouTube could result on the channel¡¯s owner being prosecuted. If you find yourself against this, it is highly recommended that you contact your member of congress and protest against this act.
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