How SOPA Could Ruin My Life ...

Snip ~ "The fine print of the law says sites that distribute copyrighted content could be subject to summary censorship, ie Torrent sites and the like.

BUT .. it also encompasses any sites that LINK to copyrighted content, which is the bomb that blows up any semblance of sense this bill might have had"

12/16/2011

How SOPA Could Ruin My Life

Hi, my name is Paul, and I’m a small business owner. But my storefront isn’t quite of the traditional variety. Rather, it’s a virtual one, a website I built from scratch, and currently own and operate.

While I enjoy my time freelancing here at Forbes, it’s not how I make most of my money.

Rather, my main source of income is from this personal site, Unreality. It’s a movie/tv/video game site that I started with a partner about three years ago. Since then, it’s grown to averaging between 2.8 and 3.2 million page views a month. Not a giant, but not bad for two people, and with ad revenue, it’s enough to live on.

But that might not be the case if the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) passes. My virtual small business, along with many others like it, might be history.

Continues ...read more ..

Why is this? Am I a pirate, who feeds my users stolen content every day and deserves to be slain by a new law like this? Not at all, and this is the fundamental problem with SOPA and other prospective laws like it (Protect IP most recently).

The goal of the entertainment industry to stop piracy is understandable.

It’s hard to make a coherent case that you should be able to download a full movie or album completely for free, without giving a cent to anyone involved. But in trying to solve this singular issue, the entertainment lobby has opened up a can of worms that threatens the entire internet, and more specifically, my livelihood.

The “actual” piracy portions of the bill are debatable in their own right, namely that the government can simply block known rogue foreign sites like The Pirate Bay from American’s eyes. Though these are the most obvious infringers, it still reeks of Chinese and Iranian internet policies that allow the government to simply censor the internet the way they see fit, and the crux of the bill seems wholly unconstitutional.

But rather where we get into even more trouble is when you look at the details of SOPA, and how it might affect someone like me. Their definition of what piracy is ends up including most of the internet, including my own site, and the punishments for even minor infringements could be catastrophic and run me out of business completely.

The fine print of the law says sites that distribute copyrighted content could be subject to summary censorship, ie Torrent sites and the like.

But it also encompasses any sites that LINK to copyrighted content, which is the bomb that blows up any semblance of sense this bill might have had.

My site likes to find the best media-related content on the internet. We post photos, artwork and embed YouTube videos that involve things about our favorite movies, shows and games. I always give credit where it’s due, but on occasion, a photographer or artist cannot be located.

Under SOPA, should they find their content on my site, they would legally have the right to petition my advertisers to stop paying me, or report me to the government.

The same goes for YouTube videos I might feature. Though the content is not mine, as I haven’t uploaded it to the web myself, I am indeed linking to it, and with this new law, I would be subject to the same sort of harsh penalties should the content within be something copyrighted like footage from a game or movie. I am willingly linking to “infringing” content, and under SOPA, can be branded a “rogue site” because of that. Such a classification could cause me to lose everything.

Read more of Paul's Story @ link