SOPA and PIPA.

There have been two bills that were trying to be passed this past week, one called SOPA and the other called PIPA. There have been many people and websites that have been protesting these bills. So what are these bills about that people are against them?

According to CCNMoney, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill that is meant to stop copyright infringement on the internet. This means they want to restrict access to websites that have pirated things on it. Their main target is the websites that deliberately pirate copyrighted information. For example, you could go on a site called Pirate Bay and type in the name of a tv show or movie, and it will instantly download the entire season for free. So they basically want to shut down any website that resembled Napster. (Remember Napster? Yeah, I do too.) The issue behind SOPA is that the idea of cutting out the pirating websites means that search engines won't be able to do their jobs by providing all the information they can. While they claim to be promoting protecting content, they also appear to be promoting censorship, which is why many websites blacked out for 24 hours in protest of this bill and PIPA.

PIPA is another bill that was being protested on the internet. According to Forbes, PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a bill that has the same sort of goals that SOPA has, except that this bill is through the Senate and SOPA is through the House. PIPA wants to protect copyrighted information and if passed, would allow those websites to be shut down that have copyrighted material. It's really just two different bills sending the same message. Both of these bills have been shelved due to all the protest.

In my opinion, these bills deserve to be shelved. I understand how protecting copyrighted material is important, but these bills are on the side of that fence that leads to censorship on the internet. The internet is one of the few places left that we can have the freedom to look up whatever we want or express ourselves in any way possible. These bills would get in the way of that. We also wouldn't be able to access the information we need because a website is "flagged" because of these bills. For all we know, the site might just have a link to a Youtube video that is a song that is not owned by VEVO or the artist. So the whole thing is just ridiculous to me. I'm honestly also sick of hearing about it. They were shelved. They are not going to be worth my thoughts until they are brought up again. But I will be happy that my internet will not be censored now and for the foreseeable future.

Sources: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm               http://www.forbes.com/sites/derekbroes/2012/01/20/why-should-you-fear-sopa-and-pipa/

Filter Bubbles

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Ever wonder why we see the specific things we find on the internet? Eli Pariser talks about this in the video Beware of ‘filter bubbles’. It’s a good video to watch because it points out a lot of things about the internet that we may not even realize. His main ideas in the video are:

1. The internet is filtering what we see in search results.
2. The filtering can be based on what type of computer you have, where you are located, and even what search engine you use.
3. Facebook does the same filtering in your news feed.
4. New sites are being personalized based on what they think we would like to see.
5. A “filter bubble” is your own personal unique universe of information that you live in on the internet.
6. Filter bubbles throw off the balance of information that we receive.
7. Our idea about the internet and gate keeping is wrong.
8. We need to be exposed to new ways of thinking.
9. The algorithms of the internet need to be encoded to allow us access to information we should be seeing.
10. We should have control over what gets through the internet and what doesn’t.

In my life filter bubbles mostly exist on Facebook. In my news feed, I usually only see what is going on in my true friend’s lives, because those are the pages I am usually on the most. There will be times when I will see a friend randomly show up in my news feed, and I won’t remember who they are because I don’t remember adding them. These days that is usually people I went to high school with. So these filter bubbles definitely exist and Eli Pariser is right to bring this to our attention.