For anyone who doesn’t know already: SOPA, ACTA and PIPA are basically bills which if brought into law would allow governments to block URLs, take down websites or browse through private information in numerous circumstances. Quite frankly; these things scare me. There is no burden of proof. A single accusation is enough for law enforcement to take down your website, online discussion group or e-learning course. Anything on the internet is at risk. It only takes one individual to make an innocent mistake (or a rival company) to post something which might be pirated, or to post a link to something that is pirated, for an entire online network to be taken down and/or blocked. These bills, and many others like them, offer very few prevention methods to prevent abuse and these forms of legislation have the dangerous potential to lead to unjustified censorship.
Naturally this has generated some angry responses with groups like Anonymous attacking government websites and with sites such as Wikipedia removing access to their site for a day as a form of protest. If these bills are allowed pass I fear for education facilities and businesses which rely on the internet. Job factories like YouTube are only successful because of free speech. Some distance learning courses are only successful because they allow, and encourage, users to speak their mind, share resources and ask questions. If a single individual makes a mistake, or an accusation is made (no matter how unfounded), then everyone else may suffer unjustly.
The counterargument is that media groups are losing money because of illegal file sharing. Yes, that is a problem but there are other ways of tackling these issues which don’t involve stepping on human rights. I don’t want a research idea or an unpatented product idea stolen because some law enforcement groups were allowed to go through my private emails legally because someone emailed me pirated material I didn’t ask for (and we’ve all recieved spam email at some point in our lives). This issue is already causing political and social unrest across the world. I strongly feel it’s a threat to freedom, to business and education. It should be innocent until proven guilty, not guilty if accused until proven innocent.
This video explains it all pretty well:
How do you feel???
Check out these links for more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
I found this particularly insightful: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2508#comic
dtdriven 
I almost died the day I went on to wikipedia to find it had blacked out in protest of changing legislation. That was one day and one website, imagine what it would be like if these laws came to pass…