In late 2011 and early 2012, the Internet protested.
Sites such as Wikipedia, Mozilla and Tumblr all changed their logos in order to combat Internet censorship.
Unprecedented, these websites were combating a bill that would change how the Internet works, for the worse. Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act would give copyright holders and the Justice Department the right to interfere with the websites.
A few months later, big sites such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and Yahoo also protested by blacking out their sites, along with sites such as Reddit, Cheezburger and The Oatmeal. When some of the latter protested, the sites blocked out what images would be considered breaking the privacy laws that SOPA and PIPA would cause, which was essentially most of their websites.
Not passed as a bill, SOPA and PIPA were not dead, but part of a bigger picture involving more important privacy information.
What does that mean?
Those pictures of Grumpy Cat, Nicolas Cage and other now-famous Internet memes would be taken down. The endless hours of amusement everyone finds while viewing photos with photoshopped captions would disappear. If someone were to use one of those pictures, they would be asked to take them down, if not sued.
In short, the Internet wouldn’t be the same. When given a court order for violating SOPA or PIPA, the site would go down and could be punished without a trial or any legal steps on their end being taken. Full of vague terms, the bill would cause more problems than it would solve.
In short, the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act took SOPA to a whole different level, also becoming a viable threat to those who use the Internet. But unlike SOPA and PIPA, CISPA has hackers and personal information mentioned within the content of the bills.
Encouraging intelligence-sharing, CISPA is meant as a way to track down hackers who target important infrastructures, such as power grids and transportation systems. It would make sense that different companies would be able to share information when hunting down hackers, but there are roadblocks to situations like this. Under CISPA, private information from Internet providers can send customer data to a government agency for reviewing. Bigger companies are in support of CISPA, since they would be protected too.
But the problem with the bill is that it’s vague on what information can be shared. Things like emails and medical records could wind up being looked at as threats. With documents such as emails and medical records being sent to the government, a black hole of information is created that the government has the ability to look at.
Legal oversight would not exist as the government has the ability to sort through the private information of civilians, who knowingly or unknowingly put too much information in their private emails.
Why should we be concerned about bills such as CISPA, SOPA and PIPA? If passed, these bills will limit the abilities individuals have with an almost unregulated medium used by millions.
With the privacy laws, sites like Reddit, Cheezburger and The Oatmeal would all essentially cease to exist. The content of many others would disappear— the Internet as we know it will change. The Internet is going to fight back on any bills that might change the way the it operates and what the average viewer does on the Internet.
As someone who uses the Internet, if not one of those running it, how would you be affected?
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