SOPA and PIPA: What is it?

Hello gingers! It's good to be educated, right?

So, today is going to be short but I do want to talk about SOPA and PIPA. If you haven't been on the Internet for the past few days, I'd like to fill you in.

I'm mainly going to focus on SOPA because that's the big one.

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill currently running through congress to stop online piracy. Piracy is when you steal somebodies work, illegally I might add, and put it on the Internet or exploit it some other way, a lot cheaper. So, if I made a blockbuster movie and somebody filmed it at their house and put it online, that would be piracy. So, SOPA is a good idea in theory.

But, if we dig a little deeper we can see that this is a bad plan all over. This would give judges rights to censor any website or video they want. Right now, websites do get a chance to defend themselves but SOPA would take away that right. This DESTROYS the idea of internet freedom an creativity. Do you like gaming videos? Yeah, if this bill passes those videos could be blocked forever. Even if you have a link to a video on a blog like this, it could be shut down. This bill will put an end to careers. This will ruin everything we love about YouTube creators.

I don't know about you, but I want a free internet.

You may have noticed the blackout today. Many websites have closed down, showing people what it would be like if the Internet was censored. Many people did not put out videos or put out awareness videos instead. I did myself today, as well. You can find this video here.

Congress votes on this bill January 24th and I believe in everybody to stop this. Click here to sign the petition, learn more,  and fight for your right to a free Internet. I believe we can do this together.

I am very passionate about this if you can't tell.

Keep On Fighting,
Rachael The Ginger

P.S. My friend Logic Box made a blog about this a while back which you can find here.