Comments on: Understanding the SOPA Bill: For the Average Internet User

By: Eve Hunt

Eve Hunt — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 10:13:38 +0000

I was looking through some of your blog posts on this site and I think this site is real instructive! Continue posting .

By: James

James — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:59:43 +0000

Thanks Zaton, love your article
I don’t blame you. Government’s prying eyes make everyone un-easy, despite the-so-called war on piracy and copyright infringements. No-one really wants the bill to affect our right to privacy. Unfortunately, Government surveillance requests are up. A recent report from Google confirmed this. Sorry I couldn’t put you at ease. Keep us posted if you hear anything else on the subject matter.

By: Sam Walt

Sam Walt — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:58:23 +0000

Mike, that would be a great article! If you do the research and write the article please let us know! I think you are correct on the reason why some bills make headline news and others don’t: money and influence. In this situation, major online companies used their power and influence to create social hysteria and a backlash against the bill hence the headline news. Every bill is created to influence and change societal norms (very dramatic word choices, I know). Just be aware of the powers of the ‘elite.’ If interested, read [i]The Power Elite [/i]by C. Wright Mills.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:57:10 +0000

Damn. That makes a whole lot of sense; I never thought about the behind-the-scenes process. But when one DOES happen to think about, there have got to be thousands of bills; why do some see the light of day and others languish in the darkness? There’s little reason to think that it doesn’t revolve around money and influence; after all, just about everything else does. It would be a very interesting and illuminating project to find those senators out, and list their relevant sponsors next to their names, and submit an article about it to the Huffington Post or some other big site that wasn’t pitching a SOPA is bad reel.

By: Sam Walt

Sam Walt — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:55:02 +0000

Terry, you have to remember it is a Bill. Every major bill has been pushed through by lobbyist on behalf of large corporations. With that said, I urge you to research the Senators who sponsored the bill and find out who their major sponsors are. Chances are the Senators’ get campaign money from some corporation that would like to see the bill passed. As for big Webmasters, why not take advantage of the press?

By: Sam Walt

Sam Walt — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:53:34 +0000

Yeah, it is amazing what happens when you actually do your research! Prime example of what your saying is the bill H.R. 1981. I wrote a response to that too. My suggestion is still do your research before you jump onto any bandwagon especially about the internet.

By: Tommy Brean

Tommy Brean — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:51:33 +0000

You know, I had never even seen it that way. All i kept hearing from my friends was that this PIPA-SOPA thing was evil-incarnate lol. Turns out a little reading can expose dogma even in the 21st century.

By: Sam Walt

Sam Walt — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:50:14 +0000

Thank you for the comment. I believe it is important to research any topic before you blast it. As you pointed out above, major websites protested it and it got everyone excited. The motivation of a big company to protest SOPA is to protect its own assets as opposed to the average user. Thanks for reading and good luck with your own personal research.

By: Terry Crews

Terry Crews — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:40:15 +0000

Hi. Interesting and informative comments above. My thing is this: isn't it possible for both to be true? I mean, for SOPA to be a tactic lauded by the big Webmasters of giants like Technorati, Engadget etc. Granted; I can appreciate that stealing content and media is bad and the originators should be protected from it; but SOPA jeopardizes us little people because there are overseers of such a Bill that would take advantage of things in the same way Homeland Security had been accused of in the past. It's too broad a brushstroke.

By: christina thomas

christina thomas — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:38:30 +0000

Now this is one of the most sober assessments of SOPA I have read to date. It reminds me a bit of the whole global warming stuff, where everybody is resolutely in some camp when, as a physicist who teaches undergrads, I know it isn’t possible that even 99% of them know what they’re talking about. Every major article I’ve read on SOPA/PIPA has lambasted it; yet the little I’ve been able to wean has me wondering exactly how it’s so bad it convinced Wikipedia they needed to shut down in order to protest it. I just didn’t see the correlation, or magnitude of the purported anti-Internet purpose of the bill. I’ll be finding time to read more about it soon…