SOPA: Access Denied

The Stop Online Piracy Act has been a fail. The act that conspired to black list websites didn't go through and probably never will. The government relentless attempts to stop copy right infringement with SOPA came to a halt, when the biggest online protest came to life, joined in by companies such as Google and Wikipedia. I can't imagine how dull the internet would be if SOPA went through. I found Herman's article very helpful in explaining exactly went down with SOPA. I remembered my Facebook newsfeed being colored by anti SOPA banners but I felt like most people weren't so sure of what it meant or what were the implications of such an act going through, I know I wasn't sure. The beauty of the internet is that it's a place for people to be creative and the possibilities are literally endless. SOPA essentially : "authorizes the attorney general (AG) to seek court orders against a U.S.-directed foreign Internet site committing or facilitation online piracy to require the owner, operator, or domain name registrar or the site name [...] to cease and desist further activities constituting specified intellectual property offenses under the federal criminal code[...]." The internet is rich of music, news articles, videos and images, where would Google be if we can't search for these things any longer. SOPA would essentially block domain names and re direct sites to government sites. Search engines such as Google, would have to block infringing sites and advertisers would be getting in trouble as well. SOPA also messes with the First Amendment, freedom of speech. For now we are safe from SOPA but who knows how much longer until the government will decide to come up with something else for the sake of copyright infringement, but we can rest assured that people will not let it happen quietly.