I can't say I'm not a bit anxious to see how Congress' SOPA bill, short for the Stop Online Piracy Act, turns out. I'm not exactly sure what it entails. I keep seeing the protests, I've read the summaries of what the bill means, and yet I have no idea how it will affect what I do on the internet on a day-to-day basis.
From what I could gather from ABC News, SOPA combats illegal digital sharing. It's supposed to protect the movie and music industry as well as other providers for online content. Companies are protesting however, because the "censorship" of the web they fear may mean that their search engines or even links on their own webpages could be blocked if attached to a site guilty of illegal file shares.
For the average college student or highschooler, this certainly may not bode well for their iPods. Surely given all of the hype the music industry has stirred up in the past couple of years regarding digital piracy--this bill, if passed, would surely move to repress such websites.
I don't pirate my music however...every single song I have has come from iTunes. So what am I worried about?
Well for starters this blog. I've made it a point to try and source as many of the photos I use in my stories, but I only started doing such fairly recently. But even if I did source a photo, what happens if the link to which it is attached is on a restricted website?? Does that mean this blog shuts down? Or I get a notice? I've seen plenty of other blogs that don't source their photos (mine included for my earlier posts). Do people even take note of such a thing?
I have occasionally in the past (and by occasionally I mean literally once...that's why its stuck in my head all these years) tried to use a photo for a power point or a project, only to be told I couldn't use such an image because I'd be stealing it by copy/pasting it. As long as you aren't literally saying..."I took this photo, all rights should belong to me" in replacement of whatever website or individual you took it from...I can't say I see the point in penalizing someone for copy/pasting images. Now as a disclaimer, I will say that only a couple of the photos on this blog are mine--but I've made no claims that any of the other ones share a common origin.
Like the Star Trek photo in my latest post......do you think that I actually took that? No of course not. Not just because I sourced it...but rather more of a common sense sort of thing don't you think? Nobody looks at a photo of Picasso and thinks that the guy who posted it is the actual artist, or owns the painting itself. That doesn't mean that people don't have a right to their work. They do, and I'm not advocating downloading pirated music or buying pirated dvds. My mere question however, is as to what will constitute as necessary censorship.
I love writing The Grog, its an opportunity to reach out to all of my college friendos, my hometown acquaintances and my family members---and yes, even you! The random stranger from Europe or Canada, or wherever you were when you selected "Next Blog" and stumbled across me. I don't know what I'd do with all of my creativity allotted time if I had to stop writing The Grog. Google is protesting SOPA...and this blogger is an extension of Google...so who knows what the future will hold.
I hope you didn't think I'd end on such a pessimistic outlook. That would be rather debbie-downer of you.
So here, watch this cute Welsh Corgi puppy dog.
Uploaded by Shane2y (Try that for sourcing witches)
--FIN--
