The Web Blackout! It’s begun!!!

Wondered why Wikipedia’s not working, why Google’s got a Black logo, why Mozilla.org is down. Well, its all to do with SOPA, and its starting now, Wikipedia english sites are now down displaying the message, As is Craigslist. Reddit is going down in an hour or two. Google should be black soon!

So what is SOPA and how does it affect us? In simple terms it is regulation that aims to cut piracy. In fact it cuts your freedoms on the internet, namely your animosity, and the ability not to get sued by everybody for everything? Starting to get the picture? Well most americans have now and are against it, we don’t see how the US congress could put it through with no support from the United States itself. But one this is for sure, if this happens then the internet will never be the same again!

What it can do is fairly shocking:

• Order internet service providers to alter their DNS servers from resolving the domain names of websites in foreign countries that host illegal copies of videos, songs, and photos.
• Order search engines like Google to modify search results to exclude foreign websites that host illegally copied material.
• Order payment providers like PayPal to shut down the payment accounts of foreign websites that host illegally copied material.
• Order ad services like Google’s AdSense to refuse any ads or payment from foreign sites that host illegally copied content.

Insane huh? But it gets worse!  SOPA section 104 offers legal immunity to ISPs that independently block websites that host illegally copied material without any prompting or advice from the government. That’s of interest for huge ISPs like Comcast, which also owns NBC — there would be nothing stopping Comcast from blocking a foreign video service that competes with NBC if it could claim it had a “reasonable belief” it was “dedicated to the theft of US property.” And indeed, Comcast is among the companies that support SOPA.

Basically this is a bad thing but as UK Citizens we legally can do nothing about it, but unfortunately it will without doubt affect our experience of the internet.