SOPA!

The 'Stop Online Piracy Act' (SOPA) is a bill in the United States which is hoping to "to expand the abiliy of U.S law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods".

The passing of the bill would of offered major corporations the opportunity to request court orders to forbid advertising networks and payment facilities (e.g, Google and PayPal) from conducting business with infringing website, if they feel their intellectual property was being infringed.

Movie studios, record labels and publishers sought after this bill, concerned about the loss of revenue that online piracy has inflicted. The aim is to prohibit U.S search engines to stop referring services which are promoting copyright, and piracy.

The counter-argument to SOPA came from internet phenomenons, like Wikipedia, and Mark Zuckerberg, with the former shutting down for 24 hours, and just displaying an anti-SOPA homepage. 7,000 different websites across the globe joined the protest, and a petition opposing the bill reached 4.5 million.

The argument against SOPA, is that it will result in a policing of the internet, and the major corporation and government will monopolise what we see, hear, think online. The takeover of the internet would end  
the right to free-speech in an online sense.

In response to the overwhelming results of Wikipedia's protest, senators, who supported the bill have backed off, and distanced themselves from the bill. In total 18 representatives said they no longer "approved" of the anti-piracy law.

This news was not well received in Hollywood, where major Hollywood movie moguls have pledged to stop donating to Barack Obama's re-election campaign. His "lack of support" in the bills, has resulted in this fiery, irked response.

The ease of which new movies, television programmes, and other media, can be streamed, downloaded, saved, distributed, for free. Record labels, movie studios will complain about the loss of revenue.

I personally believe that SOPA will prohibit and monopolise the intermet, starting a world where the corporate 'bigwigs' control what we see, read, listen to online.

SOPA being rejected is, in my opinion good for the majority of online users. However I firmly believe that the fight against piracy has a lot of chapters to be read.

Are we too distracted by social media?

Social media is the web-based technology that turns communication, into online dialogue. Through social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube etc, the users of the internet have been given an opportunity to create content accessible to the globe.

Youtube videos such as this or this would not be available for public consumption until the inception of Web 2.0 which focused on information sharing, user-centred design and collaboration of the world wide web.

The inventor of the world-wide web Tim Berners-Lee, called web 2.0 a "piece of jargon", saying his creation was for people could "all meet and read and write".

Berners-Lee said "if Web 2.0 was for blogs and wikis then that is people to people, but that's what web 1.0 was supposed to be all along".

However, now social media is an everyday fixture in our lives. Take Facebook for example, with it's new Guardian app, amongst other papers, the website has now almost become friends-reunited, the newspaper, and telecommunication wrapped up into one delicate world wide web bubble, one that doesn't look like bursting.

With its easy access to people all over the globe, how you can embed and show a friend a video off the internet and post it to a friends' profile. How you can converse with people almost like your text messaging, but in a free, quick way, a way that's available for others to view.

Facebook allows a digital interface, the ability to talk to any of your “friends”, or if you “like” groups, pages, bands, you can talk amongst fans and debate.

Facebook addiction has become a common occurrence, especially in teenagers. The website offers such an astronomical number of options, that it almost become too easy to recluse and live life between four walls, and not miss out on any social happenings.

American website CNN, had a column titled “five clues you are addicted to facebook”. The article, posted in April ’09, saying how Cynthia Newton failed to help her 12 year old daughter with her homework, saying she was “lost in facebook”.

Newton, (not her real name, used in anonymity) said she spent 20 hours a week on the website, saying she “can’t go a weekend without it”. Therapists have said they have seen social dysfunction become more common, and people alienating themselves from society, just spending time on Facebook.

The 5 steps for CNN said were signs of addictions were:

-          You lose sleep over Facebook

-          You spend over an hour a day on Facebook

-          You become obsessed with old loves

-          You ignore work in favour of Facebook

-          You get in a cold sweat when thinking about getting off Facebook

If this is true. I’m not an addict… yet