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There’s been a buzz around the World Wide Web the past few days, regarding S.O.P.A (Stop Online Piracy Act) and P.I.P.A (Protect IP Act). These proposed laws, if passed would deem anyone online who shares, “copyrighted materials” a criminal. If that sounds alright to you let me give you an example of a, “criminal act”. It’s Halloween and your son wants to dress up as Iron Man, you decide to share that image with friends on Facebook. Now because these laws are written so vaguely, you might have just committed a crime, and so has Facebook. By allowing you to show a copyrighted Marvel character on their site, Facebook, or any sites domain name can be blocked. Of course this is just an example. There is a much larger threat to our freedom and our drive for entrepreneurship. The internet and it’s users have thrived because we have the freedom to share. But companies constantly have, and will keep trying to stop the people from being free. This means money only goes to the few already at the top, it also means we must rely solely on them for our entertainment.

Clay Shirky explains SOPA and PIPA much better, in his talk with TED.

Listen here… while you can

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Yes, this is what’s really going on.