Before starting I want to address first that this is my opinion and not that of my employers. With that said, here we go.

Today Wikipedia, Reddit and 10,000 additional websites have gone black to raise awareness of two impeding bills: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Several other sites have created petitions (the largest being Google) to help fight these bills. So what’s the issue? Essentially there are two at play. Keeping the Internet free, but somehow protect against the onslaught of websites that are providing copywrited content for nothing.

For instance, under this new legislation the music video you watch on YouTube for free would otherwise require YouTube itself or whoever is posting it to acquire consent from the original content provider. What could follow is having any real tiebacks from additional links posted on blogs, websites, or social media platforms to become illegal – or unnecessarily hard to accomplish. This could essentially kill SEO currently and where it might end up. In the end, all you will be left with is a mundane list of articles with no real interactivity. This could disruptGoogle, Reddit, Wikipedia, Facebook, and thousands of other websites business models. In turn, muzzling the Internet through censorship.

This could cripple open source projects across the web, give law enforcers new powers to enforce filters on the Internet, and block access tools to get around such filters. The bill will not remove pirate sites, but merely lay down cones in the road in which to navigate around. This hurts true job creators within the web industry like Google. The Mountain View Company has already mentioned – in their blog – on how to combat pirate sites by attacking their funding.

I can think back to the old Encyclopedia Britannica on compact disk and how limited that was to where we have gone. It’s not because this resource was not valuable, but it offered no room for growth – that is unless you purchased updates.

So let’s face it. We’re spoiled. We live in a world where updates are automatic and in large part for free. Most of them go unnoticed because they are just assumed – with Wikipedia coming to mind. But what it offers is the idea of rapid growth through a community of knowledge. It may take a village to raise a child, but a community can educate the world. Why would we stop this? I agree that protecting content and its producers needs to be address, but the way the bill is written offers moderate resolution for maximum consequences. If you agree, sign Google’s petition here: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/.