Today is a day that will live in infamy, at least
in the realm of the Internet. Today, on January 18, 2012, the masses and
technology corporations rallied together as a host of influential websites,
including such power players as Google, Craigslist, Tumblr, and Wikipedia,
blacked out their websites in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a
bill that according to Wikipedia, “would expand the ability of U.S.
law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in
copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods”. This, from what
I have been able to gather, means that if I, a mere blogger hoping to have some
kind of positive impact on the world, were to post a link to a page that itself
contained links to copyrighted material, my blog could be shut down, I could be
sued, and the company that hosts my blog might even be liable to be sued. As a
student of business and journalism hoping someday to have a future on this
great thing called the Internet, this does not sit right with me.
