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Big Brother will be watching you…

Is it just us or do you also sense a trending crusade against the freedoms of us ordinary peeps going down. We see it with the Secrecy Bill saga and more recently the notorious Weather Bill (publishing a weather warning in South Africa, without written consent by the SA weather service, will earn you five years in jail and a fine of 5million Ront). Across the pond, in America, ‘the land of the free’, Hollywood (big entertainment industry) is lobbying for SOPA and PIPA to be passes into law. This legislation holds a powerful noose over Cyber companies heads by making them accountable for any unlawful copyrighted content published on their websites. Basically, it means regulatory control over the internet.

But why would this internet regulation and censorship being passed in America worry us ordinary folk here in South Africa you ask? Well, the internet is a global village, so in effect, anyone around the world who relies upon the net will be affected – from the individual to businesses. In particular, social website companies and search engines will be directly in the crosshairs of this Bill – like Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, to name a few.

A practical example of how this law would play out on a individual level could go something like this; say you were to record and upload a video, onto YouTube, of yourself singing a karaoke version of Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’. The record company who owns the rights to the song could lay a charge of copyright infringement against Youtube as a result. The punishment, as it stands, could see the termination of the website, and you would be liable to face a jail term of up to 5 years. The irony is that you could serve one more year in jail than Michael Jackson’s murderer got (he got four).

If we take a step back and look at the bigger picture – with SOPA, the Secrecy and Weather Bill, etc – we see a pattern emerging that is one sided, upside-down and shaping in on some of our ordinary freedoms. Few would benefit at the cost of the majority and ultimately, the access of free information would be at stake.  If the internet were totally regulated we could see this last great oasis of free thought and self-empowerment being dug up and a paid for parking lot put in its place – perhaps by Rupert Murdock and his News Corporation empire. Web developers, online media businesses and IT professionals will all be at risk of losing their jobs. And in this current climate of a global economic un-settlement, the IT industry (who employs and benefits society a great deal more) needs far more protection than the entertainment industry does.

As a result of SOPA’s Draconian threat some of the web’s biggest payers came out in protests against the Bill. Click on the thumbnails below to view some of the online picketing that took place on Internet Blackout day.

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