Censorship In America, It Is Here

While many of us have been watching this unfold for several years, it actually is being put into place.  The United States government is now under way to take a vote on one of the most crippling pieces of legislation to hit since the beginning of our government.

SOPA as it has commonly become known to many is now in place to become law.  So what is this all about?  It involves censoring your right to what you are able to view, upload and share across the Internet.  Sadly enough, it is not truly our government who is going to super impose this new piece of legislation but rather it is being fought over by such Internet giants such as Google who are already using SOPA like forms of censorship already.

While I certainly do not support those who willfully violate copyright infringements, what I do not support is the willful and outright violation of American liberties that are being stripped from us one at a time.

I am a web developer and have designed and started several hundred independent websites that have used images from a variety of sources.  What is everyone so uptight about?  Really, I would be flattered if someone decided that they wanted to utilize any of my images upon their websites to convey a specific message.  After all, wasn't that the initial purpose of the Internet was to be able to share a broad wealth of information around the world?

Truth be known, Google already censor the web.  If you are not sure about that or doubt that check with any website developer who has had their website taken down or blocked from having the metabots from indexing their sites because Google found them in violation of their TOS (terms of service).

Rather than raise such a fuss about who is linking to what, how about we just list the places we listed to obtain our information in a disclaimer in the form of a link.  If Google would truly divulge this information in its entirety they would have to explain that the more links that appear on a site that point to another site increases the primary sites rankings in their search engines.

From a strategic web development standpoint this could very well be extremely crippling to both the Internet industry and the hundreds of thousands of people who are employed in IT related industries that serve this modern form of communication we know as the Internet.

While Google certainly wanted everyone to sign a petition on their site that appeared yesterday, what they really did not reveal is the fact that this all controlling giant on the Internet wants to be able to control it all.  At present Google has acquired YouTube, Picassa, Picnik and many other large Internet based services.

Let's just imagine fora moment that the United States government is able to shut down the Internet for severely cripple it from what we know it to be now, there is the looming threat from the well known group Anonymous looming in the background just waiting to prove to the government what they truly are capable of.

Word has it that if the government goes ahead and dismantles the Internet that they are more than prepared to shut down the cellular networks.  If you think life without the Internet would be devastating to a large amount of people imagine just for a moment what the absence of cellular communications would be like.  Oh, by the way....did we fail to mention that the government utilizes cell phone communications for an extreme amount of confidential and mission critical information?  Let's all stand to make our voices heard and tell the government that in no way shall we stand by and watch the demise of one of the greatest tools know to mankind around the globe.  Click Here to make your voice heard and tell Congress what you think of the new pending censorship legislation.

One more thought on this highly sensitive topic....if you don't want the possibility of someone else using your information, images or materials being displayed on the Internet then maybe you should question as to whether or not you want to upload them to begin with.