SOPA and PIPA

I had never heard of these pieces of legislation, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), until today, when I hopped onto Google.com and found this:

I'd never heard of either of these pieces of legislation. I did a little bit of research and, it seemed to me, that people were freaking out way too much. The legislation seems valid and helpful, but I can see how it could spiral out of control. For my job, I cite things and the issue seems like a concern with appropriate citations, honoring copyright law, and giving credit where it is due. But, we are Americans and Americans don't like anyone to infringe on our rights. People are concerned that it will result in massive internet censorship, limiting free speech, and will hurt the economy. Therefore, several websites, such as Wikipedia, are protesting by having internet blackouts so no one can see their content, supposedly giving us a taste of what the U.S. will be like when everything on the internet is censored.

Once again, for my job, I cite lots of information and I check the citations of others. While searching for a book, Report On Indians Taxed and Indians not Taxed in the United States (Except Alaska) at the Eleventh Census, 1890 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1894), I found an online archive that had it available. I clicked on it and found this:

The website is: www.archive.org

Anyway, not happy. Thanks for helping me NOT do my job.

---Side note: This protest does not influence Congress in any way. It only frustrates their interns who are trying to find information for their Senators or Representatives. It also influences normal people, which I suppose gives the movement more support from people unhappy that they couldn't use Wikipedia to finish their report.

I don't think the legislation will pass. There is a lot of grassroots animosity toward it, plus President Obama has said that he will not support it. Censorship is stupid and keeps people from being informed*, but there are a lot of problems with illegally downloaded music, websites that stream TV shows without the copyright, and so on. These are dishonest and people should really evaluate their actions on the internet.

I had a friend on Facebook make a good point: Everyone is upset about this sort of censorship, but what should really be censored and what should Congress really put their feet down on? Pornography. It is already illegal and is very damaging. Some things, such as pornography, should be removed and censored from the internet.

For goodness sake people, try to be honest and live in a moral way. We wouldn't have these problems and huge fears about the government taking over our lives if people would just treat others the way they want to be treated.

So I still don't know where I stand on the issue. Since I've only known about if for one day, I can't say that my opinion is educated. And I would guess that most of the people posting things like this on Facebook are not very informed about the issue either. This goes right into my issue with people going along with "cool" and "conscious" companies such as Google or Toms (I read a great critique of Toms yesterday, see this article) because they think they are doing the right thing. Going along with companies is no different from going right along with the government if you are uninformed.

I'm not saying that I support SOPA or PIPA. As my experience shows, I was directly influenced by this psuedo "censoring" on the internet. I'm not saying that I oppose the potential legislation. I'm just saying that there are problems with the way people use and abuse information available on the internet.

As SOPA's name states, stopping online piracy would be a good thing. Censoring pornography would also be a good thing. Limiting free speech would not be such a good thing. People stopping to think about an issue before they brainlessly post on Facebook would be a great thing.

*Censorship sucks because some of the best books I have read are formerly banned/censored books, such as Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

An Argument For Intellectualism

Even though this is NOT a political blog, sometimes I do get political. You may remember my rant against the Tea Party. This is slightly related. The co-editor at the WHQ, Colleen, posted this on her Facebook and I agreed with a lot of the statements the author made. You can read the article here (Between Race and Reason: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life) by Susan Searls Giroux, or just read my favorite quotes from it.

• "The U.S. has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It domi­nates in discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed na­tions . . . learning is a grave political disadvantage.” quoting George Monbiot
• "It is important to note, however, that for [Richard] Hofstader anti-intellectuals are neither the 'gib­bering numbskulls' nor the 'screaming ignoramuses' that Monbiot and a growing chorus of journalists, scholars, and others criticize. Rather, Hof­stadter viewed them as a far more effective enemy to the educated mind and to a vibrant, democratic political culture, which requires for its very survival an abiding commitment on the part of its citizenry to critical thought, moral judgment, the capacity for self-reflection, and an acute awareness of self-limitation." (emphases added)
• "The capacity for reflective, creative, and critical thought, finely honed argumentation, and public persuasion—talents one might other­wise assume well recommend a candidate for the office of president—were transformed into the gravest of liabilities," for Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800, as his opponents targeted him.
• "Historically speaking, the suspicion of intellect has for centuries spawned a variety of anti-intellectual commitments—the fetishization of folksiness, the cult of efficiency and practicality, jingoistic patriotism, militarized masculinity, and religious fervor. "
• "Obama is a product of this elite system and will not push against its interests, unless compelled by an in­formed and active citizenry. 'Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irratio­nalism to his advantage,' observes Hedges. And indeed the electorate was invited to focus increasingly on the person of this potential leader—his eloquence, his gravity, his unfailing cool, even his jump shot—and a compelling personal narrative that simultaneously invoked the triumpha­lism of America’s beloved immigration mythology and offered a redemp­tive conclusion to its most egregious racial sins."
• "I argue strongly for academics, admin­istrators, teachers, intellectuals, and others to assume their responsibilities as educators who play a vital role in molding citizens who can actively and critically participate in democratic public life."
• "In order to meet all of these political, economic, and spiritual chal­lenges, the nation’s third president understood all too well the necessity of an educated citizenry. Having survived his own bitter and contentious po­litical campaign, Jefferson had witnessed first-hand the nefarious and—as we have seen—cataclysmic danger that anti-intellectual, populist dema­goguery poses for a democratic nation."
• "For Jefferson, education was the primary means of producing the kind of critically informed and active citizenry necessary to both nurture and sustain a vibrant public sphere; he believed that democracy was the highest form of political organization for any nation because it provided the conditions for its citizens to grow both intellectually and morally through the exercise of these faculties."

Now, I don't agree with everything in the article. But I do agree with the main message: American citizens have so much opportunity to be informed and educated--they should use that education to critically think about current events and politics instead of getting carried away with simplistic ideologies.