Censorship keeps increasing in the Not-So-“Land of the Free”, and HR 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (or, should that be Seditious Overt Power Act?) is just the latest example of how Big Brother knows what is right for you.  Oddly enough, GoDaddy originally came out in support of this unconstitutional act!  According to a Gizmodo article (which has a title I’d rather not repeat here):

So far, none of our voluntary action has stifled legitimate capitalism online. And neither will robust intellectual property enforcement.

This has nothing to do with “intellectual property enforcement” and everything to do with the greed of media companies.

Here’s a clue: The radio did not take away from record sales.  The VCR did not keep people from buying tapes.  Cassettes tape recorders and dubbing machines more often than not allowed people to preserve their vinyl albums longer rather than take away from either record or tape sales.  In fact, most of these have been shown to actually increase album sales.

While I don’t condone piracy, I do object to draconian government measures that can wind up becoming the tools of evil in the wrong hands.  I also object to laws that may make eCommerce companies, one of the few industries we still have in the US, move out of the States in order to legally protect themselves.  The EFF has come out against the measure as stifling free speech.  In general, most critics agree that the measure is so broad as to have any number of interpretations that could result in criminal charges being filed for the smallest of offenses.

LifeHacker has posted an article “Ditch GoDaddy’s SOPA-Loving Butt and Get a Better Web Host at a Discount” if you have GoDaddy and wish to switch.