You Need To Listen

NEW: You can now follow SOPA Live at http://sopalive.com.

The Stop Online Piracy Act is an attempt by Congress to stop online piracy which most agree is a valid issue. However, this act goes much farther than that. In its current form it will no doubt change the internet as you know it. In an attempt to intrigue you to educate yourself I am only going to tell you one point about the bill and then give you links so you can educate yourself.

This bill if passed in its current for states if a U.S.-directed site does not take actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code then the site will be in violation of the bill and will be at risk of being shut down.

This means websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and virtually any other user generated website would be a target as everyone knows that it is possible to use those types of websites to share copyrighted material as do the owners of the websites. Under the current safe harbor act, a website owner cannot be held liable for user generated content. This bill takes that limit of liability away, hence, these websites will cease to exist.

In an effort to help educate you I have provided the following links and video, please take the time to inform yourself if you are unaware of what SOPA is and contact your congress representative and tell them not to vote for SOPA:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70554.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/246516/stop_sopa_a_plea_from_the_inventors_of_the_internet.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/the-nightmarish-sopa-hearings/2011/12/15/gIQA47RUwO_blog.html
http://youneedtolisten.com/2011/12/s-o-p-a-stop-online-piracy-act-what-effect-will-h-r-3261-have-on-the-internet/

The Bill is currently in markup at the House Judiciary Committee. The House Judiciary Committee is currently scheduled to continue the markup of SOPA on Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 9am Eastern Time. Click here on Wednesday to watch the markup live.

Sign the petition to President Obama to veto this bill if it gets to his desk.

I have more resources in regards to the Stop Online Piracy Act, you can email me or do a Google search for SOPA for more information.

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