SOPA

Yesterday was the big Internet push about the proposed government bills SOPA & PIPA to restrict Americans access to certain Internet sites. A lot of this comes from the music industry wanting to stop the illegal downloading of their products costing them millions of dollars. I do get that. The problem is the bill goes much deeper then just the music industry and is certainly a 1st amendment issue. Part of the issue is who is at fault with such sites. Let's start with online gambling. If it is illegal in MN to play online poker and I make the decision to play on a site. Is it the sites fault for allowing me to play or is it my fault for doing something that I think maybe illegal. The same applies to online music sites that allow people to upload and download songs or movies. Are they to blame for setting up the site or are you for using the site. I think it is hard to differentiate. These bills certainly would affect many other sites that are not doing anything wrong. Imange not being able to use Wikipedia just because they have information on them about a site deemed illegal by our government. All seach engines such as Goggle would also be affected because they lead us to these sites. Now I don't claim to understand how the whole bills would work but this Brit has very good explaination of why we should be worried. Here is a youyube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM&feature=youtu.be&hd=1

With all that our government has on its plate, don't they have better things to worry about then censoring the internet, such as trying to figure out a way to get sales taxes out all the internet sales. That makes a lot more sense to me. It's just not fair that an internet company can sell products and not pay any sales taxes and the CMPPA which is basically a non profit business has to pay sales tax on every membership collected. I try with this blog to stay out of politics but felt that this was a big enough issue to bring it up. Take all the information available and make your own decision.