America is a great place to live, but when freedoms are threatened due to overzealous politicians, it really makes me wonder. It all goes back to the fact that while America is responsible for quite a lot of forward thinking in various fields, some people still want the country to return to a more puritanical atmosphere. Even worse, some of those people are in the government and have powers to make decisions that aren’t in the best interests of the nation.
One such person is U.S. Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), whose brainchild is the Internet-threatening SOPA bill, or, Stop Online Piracy Act. While this act does address a very real concern in the digital age – piracy, the bottom line is that it goes too far in what it attempts to do and, in the process, does more harm than good. Because of the scope of the proposed bill, not only would search engine sites be possibly found liable for questionable information, but amazingly even libraries could be held accountable. The doomsday scenario, if a law like this were to pass, would be widespread and rampant censorship of the Internet.
On January 20, the House Judiciary Committee delayed the passage of the bill in favor of more discussion about a better solution, which is a small victory. This does not by any means indicate the end of threats to the Internet, freedom of speech, and the dissemination of ideas and information.
SOPA isn’t the only bill to be proposed by those in power that would severely hamper our freedoms. Recently, another proposed law generated waves in the online community, this one called PIPA, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act.
Similar to SOPA, this bill also sought to essentially hinder freedom of speech while under the guise of preventing piracy. Luckily this bill was also postponed by the Senate, but it only delays the inevitable coming legislation that we will be faced with in the future.
One problem with politicians proposing bills like these is that these lawmakers are generally out of touch with the Internet to begin with. They clearly view the Internet from a completely different standpoint than a young, college-age person would.
One huge Internet phenomenon is memes, which can often be funny and spread a certain concept or ideal, but which are also largely misunderstood by older people. These people often also happen to be the ones enacting these laws.
The point I’m making is not that politicians should be sitting there looking at LOLcats saying “I Can Has Cheezburger”, but rather that the Internet is used for a plethora of things that would be threatened should laws like these pass. In other words, this ain’t your daddy’s Internet. The Internet is filled with a ton of questionable things, true, but does that mean that nobody should have the right to look at them should they choose to?
In the end, it all goes back to puritanism once again rearing its ugly head. As proven by the recently highly publicized and almost-banned stunt on NBC’s “Fear Factor,” where contestants were challenged with drinking donkey semen and urine, America is just too damn uptight.
In a country where violence and sex is at a premium in both movies and television shows, why are network executives, politicians, and other people in power so concerned with people doing outrageous stunts involving animal semen? Furthermore, why is the Internet’s marketplace of ideals being threatened at all? I, for one, don’t appreciate being told what I can and can’t watch and you shouldn’t either.
Gerry Wachovsky is a graduate student and columnist for the Daily 49er.
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