Stopping online piracy is one thing, but this new law (SOPA) would give the US Dept. of Justice and the copyright holders the power to implement such actions as barring online advertising networks and payment processors such as PayPal from conducting business with the alleged infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites.

So what, you may think. Crime should be punished and I agree.

But let’s say, for example, that one of my advertisers, or someone I link to is committing copyright infringement, this new law would mean they could shut down or at least blacklist my site, even if I had no idea about any of it. They could even try to charge me with facilitating copyright infringement just by virtue of linking to the sites. They could shut down my website ClassicRockLover.com if one of the videos I embedded on that blog is a copyright infringement, even though I had the permission from YouTube to embed it. For that matter, they could even try to shut down YouTube, because it allowed the video in the first place, though Google, unlike me, has a great legal team and I think there would be a very interesting legal battle.

But my point is, this new law could simply cripple the Internet. And as much as I think copyright infringement is wrong, in my humble opinion, they should put more effort into shutting down child porn sites, stopping identity theft, and locating those idiots who create viruses and trojans. This new law is quite simply over the top and many online groups are completely against it and are protesting it.

If you understand at all what this law really means, you should protest it too or at least spread awareness about it on Facebook, Twitter, your blogs. I’m not American, so I can’t write to my Congressmen, but my American friends can. And to my American friends I say this: I really like you all, but your politicians suck (except for Ron Paul). And the heavy-handedness of your American foreign policies is going to bite you in the butt – yet again.

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