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The School Newspaper of Franklin High School

Pantherbook

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The School Newspaper of Franklin High School

Pantherbook

The School Newspaper of Franklin High School

Pantherbook

Really Congress?! Really?

As if one censorship bill wasn’t enough, recently the PROTECT IP ACT, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PIPA), has drawn major media attention due to similar associated bills like SOPA (see article titled “We Don’t Want To Be C******d). According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation this bill would “invite Internet security risks, threaten online speech, and hamper Internet innovation”. Designed once again to stop online infringement and illegal downloading this bill is posed to cost the federal government $47 million if the bill passes to 2016 to enforce said laws and regulations.

There has already been much hype about PIPA on the Internet with many sites encouraging its members to sign petitions and protest their opposition. Such organizations such as the EFF (electronic frontier foundation) and Google have vocally expressed their outrage at yet another censorship bill.

PIPA is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) that failed in 2010. So what makes Congress think this one will pass? This new act has the same basic idea of the last two: censorship. As if the Internet wasn’t clear enough: they do not want to be told what to do. Just the existence of this bill proves that Congress is out of touch with society. It proves that they do not understand how upset people are getting over these bills. The Internet is build on the basis of everyone sharing information, funny cat pictures, and videos of people failing. If you take that basic right away then there are going to be serious consequence that will affect all of America.