Obama kills the Stop Online Piracy Act
The Stop Online Piracy Act is an American bill, backed by several major owners of intellectual property (you know, Hollywood, the major record labels, that bunch), that sought to shift blame for breaches copyright onto the website that hosted the content, not the user that uploads the infringing material. So, in essence, it would mean that, theoretically, YouTube could be sued every time anyone uploaded a radio rip, which would have sucked for YouTube, and quickly would have sucked for you, and for radio rips.
So, it’s pretty clear where we, along with the New York Times and most people who build the internet and sat on this issue. And it’s also nice that Barack Obama also agrees, as Forbes reports. With the President out against the bill, it’s effectively killed. Which means that the internet will continue, for the time being at least.
This comes days after Newsweek’s provocatively pro-Obama cover feature Why Are Obama’s Critics So Dumb?, readable, for free on that link. Isn’t the internet great?