SOPA/PIPA/CISPA

In the past year, online privacy has become an extremely powerful source of controversy. It has in fact always been a questionable topic, but within the past few months, the controversy has grown. Many bills have been looking for votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and websites have been fighting back.

Many anti-privacy protests have been emerging in the past few months along with the bills. One is SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act. Many websites joined in on the fight against these privacy acts, including Tumblr, Google, and many others. I use Tumblr and had the decision that day to "black-out" my tumblr which basically prevented anyone one from seeing it, as a boycott against censoring and privacy laws.


Another protest is CISPA, or Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. This protest has many more websites joining in the fight, including Facebook and Microsoft. According to FoxNews, the objective of this program is to prevent and "prohibit Washington from forcing private companies to hand over information and to help American businesses protect their computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks". 

In regards to this issue, I have to say that I disagree with the government claims that they have the right to take personal information from websites. People put their information into websites with the understanding that it is secure, and if the information were then given to the government this would not be the case. I feel as though it would anger many consumers and prevent people from using certain website, which would be a huge setback for many websites. I also do not agree that the government has the right to censor the internet. If it were censored, almost everything on the internet would be illegal, as pretty much everything today is at least somewhat suggestive of any sort of "censor-able" subject.