Yes, yes - another SOPA blog and the nifty catch-phrases that go with it for titling.

I've mentioned before that I didn't find it necessary to fear the anti-interwebz piracy bills until they came about. Which is because I highly doubt they'd come about, at least to the extent everyone's throwing shit over. There are plenty of reasons to negate the possibility of such a thing, imho, as there are really only few avenues authorities can take to enforce a bill like this.

Of course, these are just theories:



- It seems like all have forgotten the astronomical amount of information the web has in store. Plus
  the fact everything, with few exceptions, belongs to someone. Pretty much 99% of the shit anyone
  would wish to look up, download, share, drag, copy, alter, print, hear, see, and paste, is a result
  of virtual word-of-mouth.
  With that said, if the big bad government decided to sift through anything and everything that
  could be considered protected or too fun for your fragile little mind, it wouldn't happen if every
  person on Earth were working in 20 hour shifts for over a fucking decade. Something far more
  immediate and encompassing would have to be in order.



- They could decide to change the face of internet in such a way your PC works more like a pay
  phone. That is, on top of paying your ISP bill, maybe we'd all get a pop-up every 15 mins. or so
  stating something like, "We're sorry! You must pay an additional $3.00 for your next 15 minutes!"
  A nice, generalized way of keeping protected and original content on its heralded pedestal where
  it belongs, this pay-by-time method can keep logs of every site you hit, and every bit of information
  you bring up.
  Now no one has to worry about sifting through anything. The money you pay can get divvied up
  between the webmasters and copyright holders, and you're $3 in the hole for watching a foreign
  music video on YT, looking at cat pics, and playing the first level of Fire Boy and Water Girl.
  ............................ And that's not counting whatever taxes will (GUARANTEED) be tacked onto that
  pay-by-time session for your dear, caring government.



- Or maybe, you'll just have to pay for virtually everything you'd want to bring up in the first place.
  Key words, terms, names, pretty much anything that could be owned - and it is - you won't get to
  see unless you pay .50 cents on the dollar, a buck for viewing full-screen, shit like that.
  Of course, this kind of system isn't going to work too well, as owners might actually lose money
  this way - they'd be better off just letting their work float around in cyberspace. If I can't see a   
  thumbnail, I'm not gonna pay so I can take a quick peek and decide it's not the one I want for my  
  wallpaper. Nobody pays for an item they can't even see first. Nobody buys a song when they don't
  know what it sounds like.
  It would be like if Wal-Mart charged you before pressing a button that made their walls spin
  around, just for the privilege of seeing what merchandise they have - on top of paying to take it  
  home.


                  


And seriously, too many people in this country have made far too much money off what the internet has been so far, for the government to just turn it on its head. Too many citizens who pay taxes from income exist with the everyday goal of coming home from work, and settling down at night to view some show reruns, awesome porn, and copy some tunes onto their hard drive via the web. There's no fucking way they'll willingly pony it up to aid anyone in dictating the how, when, and why of their favored form of lifestyle and communication.

After all, if the government really wanted to ensure anything protected, under copyright, owned, or whined about really got the security they wanted, with as little manpower, money, and effort as possible? They could always....



-  Eliminate the internet. Yes, just like the United Arab Emirates and the motherland of China,
   access to the web beyond simple, regulated sites like dictionaries, encyclopedias, computer
   assistance, and Fox News, would be off-limits. No protected music, no recorded episodes of
   Becker, no pictures of Yoko Ono - it'd be a first-class ticket back to 1990, and the entire rest of
   the world - with the exception of mud-hut dwelling tribesmen and Muslims that can't risk seeing
   a woman's face in a toothpaste ad - will be ahead of the United States in a lot more than
   education, steel, medical school graduates, and physical health.
  

As if we don't have enough to contend with.