If my message of being prepared for changes in your business isn’t striking a strong enough note with you, ask yourself this:
How would you conduct your business – and all your marketing – if the government shut down your website? Or if the American government banned your site from U.S. customers because they deemed your site to contain pirated information? How would you collect payments if the government told PayPal they could not have any further business dealings with you because you violated copyright?
I want to make it clear, I am all in support of protecting intellectual and creative property. But our friends to the south are looking more and more like the Chinese and Iranians with proposed laws like this…
There are two bills before Congress in the U.S., SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) that are raising a helluva ruckus south of the border. If you haven’t heard of it, you need to educate yourself – quickly. Even those of us outside of the US need to make our voices heard before the American government make a huge and drastic mistake.
Essentially, SOPA and PIPA would enable the Justice Department to arbitrarily shut down websites accused of piracy – including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter among others. That’s just for being accused of infringement… no due process, no ‘safe harbor’, no opportunity to respond. Share a link to a favorite music video from Vimeo on your Facebook channel and feed it into your blog – that is considered piracy and boom. You’re done.
Not just an American issue
Even if you reside outside the U.S., your domain can be blocked from U.S. customers if it is deemed to infringe these acts. For this reason it is being called “The Great Firewall”, more than a suggestion that this legislation falls into the same category as China’s “selected search” ability.
And wonder of wonders, who are some of the lobbyists leading the charge to put this legislation in place? The mainstream media. Time-Warner (Fox), NBC, CBS and ABC. The big record labels Universal, Sony… the major movie makers… they are the ones who benefit if this bill becomes law. Because they would be empowered to shut down or block a site for even LINKING to copyrighted material.
It would limit your ability to get news and information from anyone but them – all you would get is their crap programming and slanted reporting. In fact, as pointed out in the Young Turks video, main stream media isn’t covering SOPA at all. There’s the proof that they do NOT want the American people to know about it!
It is censorship. Plain and simple. In the 1930′s there were book burnings. I’m about to go to war with the high school principal here in Olds for censoring films and movies out of my son’s classroom. We have to turn back the telecoms from limiting our bandwidth so we can continue to have a choice in how we get our news and entertainment. And now complete domain blocking. The internet was created to share information. This would stab it in the heart.
This is how it starts. This is how, little by little, you have your rights taken away from you. There isn’t always a Blitzkrieg.
And yes, I am drawing a parallel.
We in Canada should pay particular attention. After all, we are constantly living under the control of the CRTC – the government-funded police force (dare I say, “Gestapo”?) for the Big Three Telecoms (Telus, Bell and Rogers). This little conspiracy keeps our cell phone bills the highest in the developed world. Almost annually they threaten to squeeze the snot out of our bandwidth so we can’t stream QUALITY television and movies of our choice over the internet – not without paying a fortune to the Telcoms for the privilege of doing so.
Be warned – The Big Three would LOVE to see a SOPA-like bill before Parliament. The Big Three are also woven in tightly to the major media in this country, owning or owned by Global and CTV. And we already know about how much international content is choked off on our televisions and radios to protect jobs at the Sacred Cash Cow, the CBC.
Internet Blackout?
Opponents of this bill are so vehement that this bill die on the floor of Congress this month, that there is a movement afoot to conduct an internet blackout on January 23, the day before the bill comes up for debate in Congress. We’re talking NO Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, PayPal, or Yahoo. A majority of tech giants are working to coordinate taking their services offline for one day (possibly longer!) in protest of this bill, to let the world know exactly what kind of impact this legislation can have on their businesses and their daily lives.
(This is the reason why we haven’t been able to pin down our teleseminar date… we are waiting to see if we’ll be able to do any business the week of January 23!)
In the meantime, Grassroots is preparing a contingency plan should the big internet companies go offline for a day or six in a couple weeks. We may not be able to send or receive emails or conduct payment transactions during the blackout. If the blackout continues for more than 24 hours, we will have alternative solutions ready to put into action. I suggest you prepare yourself as well.
To our friends in the U.S., please… contact your Congressman TODAY and stop SOPA and PIPA.
Anyone up for Occupy Round 2?
This time, park your tents at Universal Studios, Sony parking lots, and all the major media outlets around the country. (At least we’d all know what you are protesting this time, and there would be a point to it…)
I’ve ranted enough… for some VERY informative videos, check these out:
http://bit.ly/yX037f - Main Stream Media not reporting on SOPA
http://act.ly/5cz (Some language) – Media outlets paid to get SOPA to Congress, TechCos have to pay to make it go away. Democracy or Payola?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM - A British lawyer tears SOPA apart. Brilliant.
To find out about SOPA supporting companies:
http://bit.ly/wu78Wo
http://bit.ly/zPq4Rm
http://bit.ly/ABGKcF - along with notes on levels of punishment for violation of the New Order.
