Stop the War against the Internet!!

In the magical far away land of the United States of America the forces of evil are gathering in Congress to pass two new bills aimed to cripple the Internet and stop the forces of progress. The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the Protect IP Act are two attempts to kill Internet forever. Both acts claim to be against piracy, but they are not. They are actually directed against normal Internet users and small businesses like Channel Awesome who make their living on making reviews and parodies of popular culture. If these acts pass it would be impossible for anyone to even use a few seconds clip from a movie, television series or video game. The worst thing is is that they allow a Corporation to define an act of piracy themselves and then just file a complaint to the Justice Ministry. The Justice Ministry will then just close the site, without giving the site owner any possibility to defend himself. This WILL be abused. Already today you can get fucking sued just if your basement band play some Metallica songs and you post them on Youtube, since the record companies claim full copyright on the song. Now it will get even worse.

Think about it, youtube is full of Hitler getting angry parodies, and while it's a German company that has the copyright claims on clips from Der Untergang, a lot of these parody clips with false subtitles are made in the US. Would youtube now have the responsibility to take them all down, or be closed down? According to these new acts: yes. Probably around 60% of all material on youtube break copyright rules somehow. As i said before, just having a small three second clip from a movie in a video that is really about something else is a breach of copyright legislation. Would this mean even big Google owned youtube is threatened? Yes, that what it means. How many of you enjoy watching Let's Plays, you know where you watch a person play a video game while commenting. If this legislation is passed all Let's Plays would be illegal, since the breach copyright legislation. The content of the video games are owned by the corporations that make them, and even if there's no playing, just watching someone else play, it would be illegal. And don't thing there will be no abuse. When it comes to Internet reviewers I'm sure those who gives positive reviews would not be in any danger, you give free advertising to the movie makers after all. But in the future, if your review is negative, your site will go down and you will be sued. This is the reality of those two bills. If they pass it's a declaration of war on the Internet.

So what does it mean for us not living in the Holy Americaland. Well, American companies can claim copyright grievances of your site anyways, and it could be closed down in the United States. We are talking about China like censorship here. And don't forget that laws from the US tend to spread to other countries fast. So if any Americans stumble on this blog, please write to your Congressmen and Senators and ask them to stop the war against the Internet.