All right everyone, we’re taking a little break from the usual round of jokes about how celebrities are awful to focus on something serious here: you may have heard of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IPs Act (PIPA) that are coming up for consideration right now. Both of these bills are meant to stop piracy of music and movies, which is admittedly a serious issue. They’re just going about it in the worst way ever. Here’s the thing: every day, we wake up, pour ourselves a fresh cup of kickass, give last night’s trick cab fare so he can get home, then we get to work finding stories, linking them, quoting them, then offering a couple dick jokes here and there.
Nothing wrong with that, right? Here’s the thing: SOPA and PIPA are kind of an over-reactive bunch. If we were to link and quote something that came up for copyright issues, this site, and other sites much like this one, could be shut down without due process. Starting to see where the bullshit in all of this comes in? I mean for shit’s sake, it’s not like we’re stealing money from people and then rolling around in our untold billions; we’re just a bunch of gay guys who like making fun of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian because we think they’re the worst. Here’s a quote from USA Today to clarify all this:
Among the websites that have gone dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA): Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing, WordPress, MoveOn.org and Mozilla, creators of the Firefox Web browser.
Both bills would allow the government to shut down websites that sell pirated goods or violate copyrights. Opponents of the bills — including sites staging temporary blackouts — believe they will stifle both innovation and free speech on the Internet.
“These bills wouldn’t get rid of pirate sites,” says David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer in a post on the company’s official blog. “Pirate sites would just change their addresses in order to continue their criminal activities. There are better ways to address piracy than to ask U.S. companies to censor the Internet. “
Now, who do you think knows more about the Internet here: a bunch of dipshit politicians who think the web is a series of tubes, or the company that can find anything and everything on the web in less time that it takes to to piss? At this point, it’s like they’re trying to get rid of a hangnail by sawing off their arm. You can’t impose upon the free speech of others just because you want a false sense of security.
Call your representatives and ask them not to pass SOPA or PIPA.
We now return to your regularly scheduled jokes about how Paris’ vagina is a great white shark.
