This Week in F**ked Up Sh*t That Will Shut Down Your Favorite Sites: SOPA

If I were to bring up SOPA in conversation most of you would either have no idea what I was talking about, or expect me whip them up some Spanish soup, but the Stop Online Piracy Act has the potential to affect your daily lives on the interwebs, and your favorite rappity rap sites, like no other piece of legislation ever introduced. So yeah, it's worth taking the time to get edu-ma-cated.

Put as simply as possible, SOPA would give the government unprecedented powers to shut down sites it suspects of engaging in (or facilitating) the illegal transfer of music/video/etc. In addition to the loss of their sites, violators would face five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months.

Basically, it would allow the government to shut anyone down they decide needs to be shut down - like what happened to OnSmash on the largest scale possible.

To be real, not every site is an innocent puppy-hugger being picked on by the mean ol’ Feds. A lot of sites knowingly play with fire – offering entire albums for download, re-uploading videos to their own player, etc. - and so it's hard to feel bad for them when they inevitably get burned. And artists have a legitimate beef with anyone who offers their music for free illegally. They deserve legitimate protection and recourse against those they believe are acting illegally.

But here's the problem......

Let's walk through a completely realistic scenario. You own a rappity rap site. One day you wake up and the government has shut you down with no prior notice. It takes you weeks to even find out what the charges are against you, and then another year working your way through the government's ridiculously complicated bureaucracy before you finally prove your innocence. By the time they get around to giving you the site back it's been down for so long it's essentially worthless. You lost your audience and all your advertisers left somewhere around week two of the shut down.

(I'm sure that's a completely crazy scenario that hasn't ALREADY FUCKING HAPPENED!)

To make matters worse, the language of the law is so broad that it's impossible to guess what constitutes "illegal" activity. Would a site be held responsible if it posted a mixtape that contained illegal samples? What about if a random user included an illegal download link in its comment section? According to the law, the answer is "maybe, depends on how we're feeling."

Let me put this in terms everyone should be able to understand. Imagine if the government had the right to seize your home if it suspected you, or anyone who's ever been in your home, of doing something that may or may not be illegal. But don't worry about it. If it turns out you were innocent you'll get your home back sooner or later.

Good times.

Thankfully some sizable protest is building towards SOPA. Obama has said that he won't be supporting the bill and tomorrow a number of sites, most prominently Wikipedia and Reddit, will go completely black in protest. In addition, there are a number of other ways you can get involved.

Regardless of the outcome, unless major labels, Hollywood and the RIAA stop asking "how can we stop fans from getting music" and start asking "how can we make it as easy and dope as possible for fans to get music legally?" this cycle of shut downs that don't actually do anything will never stop.

In the meantime, I'd like to dedicate this one to everyone who supports SOPA, in particular the RIAA and Universal Music Group. This one's for you guys!