I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT SOPA

I went to China on a study abroad for 7 weeks in 2010, and as a result of my experience there I think there is a vast difference between censorship and what SOPA is trying to do. However, I do think that some of the language of the proposed bill is vague, and it does seem like a "guilty until proven innocent" system, as Ben Anderson suggested as a comment to David Perkins's post. I also think that once the government has a foot in the door to controlling something, they will gain more power over it than we initially want to allow.

When I was in China, I was not able to access any blogs, so I could not share my experiences with friends and family in that way. I was able to use my Gmail account, luckily, which was questionable at the time since Google had threatened to stop censoring search results. I could not access Facebook, and while attempting to research for homework assignments, I ran into blocked websites, even though I was careful not to search for anything that I thought would have cause to be blocked.


This was censorship. However, as far as intellectual property goes, there seemed to be no respect for it. One of my Chinese friends emailed me a link to a website that allowed free downloading of pretty much any music. There were several shops in Nanjing that sold DVDs and CDs for extremely cheap prices (we're talking new releases, entire seasons of TV shows, the works). I am pretty sure they were illegal copies. But they were out there in plain sight, not underground. There is a big difference to me between protecting intellectual property and censorship.

However, I don't actually agree with SOPA as it currently stands.
If you want to read the text of the bill yourself to avoid biased perspectives: Text of SOPA Bill. I haven't read it all yet, but I think it is interesting that it says over and over again that the groups have "5 days" to take action in blocking access to offending FOREIGN websites. I searched the bill and the only times the word "domestic" shows up are in the definitions. Basically, Domestic websites are anything that is registered within the U.S. But this makes me wonder, how much control does the government have over registration  of domain names in the U.S.? Who controls this? I fear that those with deep enough pockets can cry "witch" and will have the power to take down websites, without appropriate checks and balances.