{"id":1863,"date":"2012-01-10T10:47:39","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T18:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=1863"},"modified":"2012-01-10T10:47:39","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T18:47:39","slug":"open-space-sopa-threatens-online-freedoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/01\/10\/open-space-sopa-threatens-online-freedoms\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/i>: SOPA threatens online freedoms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Graphic by Jessica Tai\/Nexus)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Freedom is one of the single most important ideals of this or any generation.<\/p>\n

Wars have been fought countless times throughout human history over freedoms. Freedom of religion, freedom from slavery, freedom of speech, freedom from oppression… the list goes on and on. Even now, wars and movements are combating these same afflictions worldwide – but the latest battleground isn\u2019t even a real place.<\/p>\n

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a bill that was introduced in October in the United States and it threatens to censor the Internet. The bill would allow US government and copyright holders to seek court orders and shut down websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.<\/p>\n

At first glance, that might seem like a victory for the good guys – after all, all piracy is bad, right? But the downside to SOPA is so much greater because it threatens freedom of speech and expression online, it threatens to censor and cripple the internet, and it\u2019s being instituted by what is considered to be one of the most corrupt governments in the western world.<\/p>\n

It would be naive to think that only the illegal websites would be shut down and blocked under this new legislation. There are already examples of unjustified shutdowns of websites and servers due to alleged copyright infringement.<\/p>\n

Giving those same people a bigger weapon to utilize isn\u2019t going to solve any problems; it\u2019s only going to make the damage much more substantial.<\/p>\n

The printing press went through similar growing pains when it was invented in the 1400s and suffered through numerous attempts at censorship and regulation over the centuries. But it also helped to create a knowledge revolution for humankind and changed society as it was known.<\/p>\n

The internet is the single greatest human invention since man set foot on the moon.<\/p>\n

In a short span of time, the internet has evolved from a small array of networked computers communicating to each other to a massive digital cyberspace where entrepreneurs and consumers daily do billions of dollars in business, and information about anything is constantly just a Google-search away. Your phone probably has internet access these days.<\/p>\n

Last year, the United Nations declared that access to the internet is a fundamental human right.<\/p>\n

SOPA threatens to stop all of that by allowing censorship of the internet in the United States. And if you think that might not affect Canadians, think again: most of the internet servers and infrastructure reside in the United States.<\/p>\n

So if the powers that be decide they want to censor websites, the whole world – literally – will be affected by it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Freedom is one of the single most important ideals of this or any generation. Wars have been fought countless times throughout human history over freedoms. Freedom of religion, freedom from slavery, freedom of speech, freedom from oppression… the list goes on and on. Even now, wars and movements are combating these same afflictions worldwide – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views","category-january-11-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1863"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1868,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863\/revisions\/1868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}