On Thursday, U.S. Senator Kay Hagan (D–N.C.) issued a statement reaffirming her support for legislation that will limit the accessibility of Internet sites like Wikipedia.
As Hagan’s constituents, UNC students are in a position to influence decision-making in the national arena. If they hope to continue to be able to use websites like Reddit and Wikipedia as they have in the past, students must make their voices heard.
Furthermore, current college students’ age and familiarity with the Internet lends their SOPA-related protests greater credibility than most other complaints.
In her Thursday statement, Hagan acknowledged that some changes would need to be made to the bills before they are put to a vote. This is a gross understatement.
PIPA is the sister bill of the more widely publicized SOPA, which, according to opponents, could make censorship easier and lead to the complete shutdown of some user-generated websites.
For the most part, the components of this bill actually aimed at stopping piracy are perfectly reasonable. Its other provisions, however, are severely misguided.
The primary problem is that the laws would place culpability for the dissemination of pirated material on the administrators of user-generated sites, not on the users who upload the content.
An analogy would be dropping a nuclear bomb on an otherwise friendly and productive nation because a few rogue residents acted objectionably, without their government’s knowledge or endorsement.
PIPA and SOPA should be scrapped, and new, more specific bills should be proposed in their stead.
