What A Difference A Little Protesting Can Make! - By Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson is owner, operator,king and
all-around dictator ofThe Skewed Review.
He's also the opinion editor of Dixie Sun
which you can find at dixiesunlink.com!

We’d all better get our piracy urges out of us before the Stop Online Piracy Act or the Protect IP Act get through Congress or the Senate.

Once upon a time SOPA and PIPA were just for dirty hands and princess’ sisters, respectively. But thanks to our legislative system, those two words could mean the end of your blog and the end of Wikipedia.

That’s bad news for about 96 percent of college students who passed LIB 1010 but didn’t retain any of the information.

Wikipedia gets a quick review of four and a half out of five so-called experts editing its so-called facts. I’m not sure if that’s a good review or a bad—all I know is it’s fun to add your own information to the online encyclopedia. 

Yes, in order to stop the online piracy of music, movies, books and other such copyrighted or trademarked materials, SOPA and PIPA would shut down websites that host pirated material. And yes, this can include links.

If this sounds like a weird solution to an already out-of-hand problem, then you’re not alone. I myself was wondering how this glorified “shoot the messenger” style tactic was actually going to work. After all, how does mowing down a weed actually destroy the plant itself? Answer: It doesn’t. You have to dig that weed up, cite it for copyright infringement, fine it literally more than Bernie Madoff is legally required to pay his victims, sentence it to jail longer than a rapist, and then you just might have yourself a dead dandelion.

That is, unless that root decides to up and move to Canada or something.

If SOPA-scum and not-one-more-PIPA passes, then any scallywags outside our borders would still be able to pirate to their yo-ho-heart’s desire. And we, as gullible as the day we voted in our representatives, would have to live in a world where you can’t look something up on Google because the search engine would be hosting pirated material.

Yarg, that might be a little mountain-out-of-proverbial-mole-hill-ish of me, but who's to say the law would never go that far? I mean look at how often we need to interpret the Constitution. Can you really tell me right now what the Founding Fathers meant when they drafted up the Second Amendment?

For all we know, the Founding Fathers really did want every man, woman, child and housecat to carry a fully loaded AR-15 with a 30-round steel magazine. But if I try and give my 4-year-old niece a Glock22 pistol for her backpack, then suddenly I’m a criminal.

Someday these acts will become more than just attempts at stifling the pirate industry. This really is a slippery slope.

By the way, I’ve got a quick review for the writers of these acts: The U.S. legislators are pretty much known for their youth and ability to see changing trends. Seriously though, who can read that sentence while keeping a straight face? My review is for all of Congress and all of the Senate to either start Benjamin Buttoning and aging backward, or for the rest of America to age to about 60. That way, we’ll all at least be on the same page when it comes to thinking what will solve piracy and what won’t.

I urge you to contact Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, contact Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and contact Rep. JimMatheson, D-Utah, and tell them to vote “no” on SOPA and PIPA. Because really, if we can’t have Google or Wikipedia or your blog, then what good is the Internet? Just porn?  

So share your SOPA and PIPA experiences with the world! Did you contact your representatives in D.C.? Will you personally be adversely affected? Or frankly, do you just not give a damn? Comment below, or follow "The Skewed Review" on Twitter @TheSkewedReview and "like" it on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheSkewedReview.