What I am given to understand from reading this bill is that, say you, my reader, linked something in a comment on my blog, say the link was to something that was copyrighted, or, perhaps someone just *thinks* its copyrighted. Well, guess what, MY site would go down for investigation. Because someone else linked to it in a comment. Or, say I post a picture of my kids, and one of them is wearing a shirt with a copyrighted logo on it, that would be a felony. Now, go look at your photos that you have posted to Facebook or on your blog. Look closely at those pictures. Is someone wearing something with a corporate logo on it? Felony. Is there anything in the background that is under copyright? Felony. Do you have embedded home video on your blog? Is there music playing in the background, say from the TV, is it a song that was written by an artist that is still alive or has died less than seventy years ago? Felony.
Are you scared yet?
This is a doorway to information censorship and any sort of censorship is an affront to one of the great tenets of this country, The freedom of speech. I realize that right now the bill is only targeting offshore sites, but considering the WWW is a global entity, how long before it becomes U.S. sites that are targeted? And how many sites do you visit regularly that are located on different parts of the globe? Do you read blogs from Europe, Asia, Australia? If a corporation decided that that blog *may* have copyrighted content, and it got taken down, would you be outraged? Then let's stop this before it starts, call your congressman, your senators, sign a petition.
Freedom isn't free, but information should be.
