This is important — I’m sure you’ve heard a little bit about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), but I think it’s important to stand out against it.  If you search anything on Wikipedia today, you’ll not be allowed to view the results.  Instead, you’ll be automatically redirected to a page asking for your zip code to contact your state representatives and tell them you are against SOPA.

It’s important to oppose SOPA because to summarize it, webmasters would be in charge of filtering EVERY bit of information posted to their sites.  For small companies, this would be a tremendous task, as they’d have to filter all comments, posts, or bulletins before being displayed online.  This would in turn cut into company budgets, due to having to hire someone full time to monitor the information.  On a larger scale, websites such as YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, would be responsible for filtering every post that’s made.  This would create a hassle, as a team of people would have to moderate every single post/comment.  With thousands of Twitter messages, Facebook status updates, and videos uploaded to YouTube every second, you can see how this can begin to be a BIG issue, and a big bottleneck for most websites.

It’s important let everyone know that you oppose SOPA.  We have several late-aged men and women making decisions about how the Internet is being formed and how it “should” be managed, instead of letting the youth dictate how information should be shared.  It’s no secret that the world’s youth download/share music/videos/media in an illegal manner.  It’s the same as recording a song to a cassette tape from the radio.  The government and other agencies will never be able to stop people from breaking the law — it’s simply impossible.

SOPA is affecting your freedom of speech, in the digital format.  Although the principle of regulating what is shared online is a good idea on paper, SOPA has been developed for all the wrong reasons.  Voting begins on January 24th, 2012, so it’s imperative everyone speak up!

For more information, look at Google’s “Doodle” today — you’ll see that the Google logo has been censored.  Do a search on Wikipedia — you’ll be surprised at what you may find.. or won’t find.

If you oppose SOPA, please sign the petition below:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

My name is David M. Auble, and I oppose SOPA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E46

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Please feel free to pass this post on to anyone and everyone you know.  People need to know and be educated about SOPA and the real threat it can be.  Watch more information:

Tags: oppose sopa, sopa, stop online piracy act, stop sopa