January 18, 2012 was the most productive day I’ve had in the past year. I woke up with a gleam in my eye and a bright vision for the future. I completed all of my assignments for the week, exercised in the morning, had a healthy breakfast and called my grandmother. She’s doing fine.
I was looking through the perspective of a freshman again, paying attention in class and eager to satisfy my information-craving mind. The only problem was, it was not any sort of epiphany. I didn’t wake up to the voice of God persuading me to better my academic life and stop being such a procrastinator. I didn’t watch a self-help video.
No, Jan. 18 was the day the Internet stood still.
Most of my go-to procrastination websites that facilitate my laughter and curiosity on a daily basis were blacked out in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. Websites such as Wikipedia, Reddit, WordPress and many more joined the nation-wide blackout of sites that protested censorship bills. I had no idea what to do with myself — so I did school work.
These websites weren’t playing a mean joke. They had good reason to blackout.
I’m sure most of Loyola figured out why they couldn’t find their homework answers on Wikipedia. But I’ll put the bills into context. In a nutshell, PIPA and SOPA are designed to combat piracy on sites that are committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations dealing with copyright infringement.
If a foreign-registered website is found guilty by accusation of any copyright infringement, SOPA would require omission of the site from search engine findings, ban advertisers from linking to the site, cease payment transactions from the site and United States customers and block customer access to the site. The idea of catching those rascal pirates sounds justifiable and follows the ideals of the crusading American, of course, but the devil is in the details.
The bills use vague and misinformed definitions of the difference between foreign and domestic sites. Supporters of the legislation claim that the bills only aim at foreign threats, but the Internet is certainly not as simple as they perceive. Companies based out of the United States with legitimate online activity may outsource their domain names through foreign registrars, such as Bit.ly and Redd.it, for example.
Even though these bills are likely not to pass, the dangers of Internet censorship are real. I’m no political expert, but I sure do love the Internet and its tendency to keep me entertained when schoolwork has me down in a rut. Now, go call your grandmother.
Eric Knoepfler can be reached at
