The video you just watched is what easily could happen if SOPA or Protect IP get passed.  No more videos from us, heck many of your favorite sites could be done, either taken down via the bill or shut down due to an owner’s fear of the repercussions from the bill.

With that out of the way, I would like to apologize for the popup that was on the site for most of yesterday, as well as the video that you just watched. Unfortunately we believe that we had to do something to grab your attention.  The above mentioned bills intend to do some good, but are far too vague, and in reality could damage the Internet far more than it could ever help. 
These bills could end up shutting down countless sites like TGWTG under the vagueness of its wording.  Even if our site doesn’t shut down, we’d have to filter EVERY single post, comment, blog, and video that goes on our site, deleting anything that could every have a chance of being questionable for fear of getting shut down because one single link was reported via a copyright claim.  These acts destroy everything that was set up with the DMCA.  No warning, no chance to remove the infringing content.  These bills would also begin our descent down a very slippery slope, one of which we may have no chance of getting back up from.

This video below explains things a lot better than I can.

Now we have a large international audience, so if you are viewing TGWTG from another country I’m sure you’re asking yourself, how does this affect me?  We’ll TGWTG is based in the states, and Channel Awesome is an American company, so if the bill passes and we are cut off from our advertising revenue, search engines, and basic domain name lookup..  well the site will be gone, and it won’t just be us.  Thousands of Thousands of sites could disappear over these bills.

 

So what can you do?
If you’re a citizen of the United States, call your local representatives.  Calling and letter writing will always work better than email.  If you don’t know their number , use this site:
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Read up on the law so you can be informed of what is going on:
American Censorship
http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/sopa-hollywood-finally-gets-chance-break-internet
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/house-takes-senates-bad-internet-censorship-bill-makes-it-worse.ars
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/sen-ron-wyden-to-place-a-hold-on-the-protect-ip-act.ars
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show

Also, on a closing note, please don’t think that these bills have no chance of passing, because they do.  They have some powerful people backing it, and they’re trying to push it through as quickly as possible. Even if these bills are only used to target 'rogue' foreign sites as it states, it will establish a precedent for future bills. If we don't stop these bills now, how can we ever hope to stop them in the future?

Would you rather possibly overreact now, or have to worry about the possibility of these laws passing and what it could do to many of your favorite sites down the line?

Discuss this here