Day 9: Stop SOPA! Unfair!

          Today I decided to take a step outside of the ordinary articles posted on this blog, and write about a current political issue. Most commonly known as SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, Protect IP Act, these bills, which were first proposed by Lamar Smith, would close down many user-content web-sites. Personally, I don't think Lamar anticipated the commotion that these bills would generate. By proposing these bills to Congress, Lamar had intentions of combating theft of property on the Internet. However, the only thing he got out of this was the disappointment of millions. One of those millions happens to be me.
          Honestly, I hate these bills. They impact me, as well as millions of people, in horrible ways that could change the way we live. My searches would be refined to a very small number of sites because many sites, such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and even this blog, would be closed down. One could argue that I don't really need YouTube. However, I'm on it every day, and I do occasionally reference it for necessities. Believe it or not, some people's careers either depended on it, or depend on it as of now. Also, reference sites like Dictionary.com, Merriam Webster, and Wikipedia won't be available. I use many of these sites on a daily basis because they help me with school work. I can't even recall the number of times that I had to use these for research projects, and, without them, I would've had a very hard time. On an estimation, I've read around 150-200 Wikipedia articles.
           So, what would happen without these? Well, the Internet life would go back to the 80s. One major purpose of these sites is to save time consumption. For many school projects, I look up articles and terms on the Internet. Without as much of the Internet, we can't look up topics in an online encyclopedia, or Wikipedia. We would have to drive half-an-hour to the local library, then find a book, look through the table of contents, and read 20 pages until we find an answer that might not even be satisfactory. If the Internet remains intact, this could all be reduced to a 10-second search with a satisfactory answer. We need to banish SOPA!