What is going on with America now a days?  I thought they were having troubles with online Government censorship in China, but never thought that would be a problem in the ol’ US of A.

Many of you were probably unaware of SOPA and PIPA until Wednesday’s massive online blackouts by big names such as Wikipedia and Google.  This bill (submitted by a Texas Republican, Lamar Smith) is aimed towards stopping online piracy through censorship.  What are they thinking?!

If we allow Congress to pass a bill to censor certain sites they deem to be worthy of censorship, what’s to stop this freedom –or lack thereof- from expanding to our personal blogs and social media sites.  Piracy is a big deal with the exponential growth of information available on the Internet now, but is it such a large problem that we should have to resort to censorship?

The music stars, TV stars and all others affected by the rise in piracy aren’t the ones suffering.  They still make the big bucks, while we are the ones who are trying to make it.  That $14 that these stars are losing out on for the album we downloaded rather than bought helps us out much more than it does them.

The television show, South Park, had a really good episode out a few years back about piracy.  The theme was how these celebrities couldn’t afford the best new jet, or the $20 million house, but had to settle for the next best one.  The running joke was that piracy didn’t hurt them as much as they were making it seem.

This is a huge infringement on our rights and I feel it will only serve as a stepping-stone for further expansions of bills such as these in the future.  If we allow for our rights to be eroded over time, we won’t have a rock to stand on when we find ourselves without them.  It’s up to us to stand up for our rights and make our voices heard.  There are multiple petitions you can sign online. Look up SOPA on Google and I guarantee that one of the petitions will come up.

Contact your Representative and let them know that if they support this bill, they do not speak for you. Barrow (SOPA co-sponsor), Isakson and Chambliss (PIPA supporters) need to hear our voice.  Stand up and speak out.