We visit our favorite sites every day without thinking about it.
We go to our favorite video sharing site to watch a funny video or maybe a video that will help us learn how to do something new we want to learn.
We load all of our vacation pictures up onto picture sharing websites, probably have some special moment caught on video at the video sharing site.
We rely on the information that we can find online at community shared information sites, online encyclopedias of collective knowledge that help us write terms papers, articles, or learn more about people and companies we do business with.
We laugh at the things our friends say on social sites and smile at glimpses we get into the lives of people we see in movies and on television.
What if it all started to go away?
What if you woke up tomorrow and found that the site you store your children’s pictures on was no longer reachable?
What if you tried to watch your sister’s vacation videos only to be told it was banned from viewing in your part of the world?
What if you lost half of the Internet in the blink of an eye?
How much freedom would you be willing to lose?
How much freedom have you already lost?
Online piracy is a serious issue, but so is online freedom.
SOPA seeks to stop online piracy, but what is Congress asking us to give up if SOPA passes?
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Almost 50 years ago the United States Army Combat Developments Command Combined Arms Group gave my father, Billy L. Fikes, a citation for meritorious service as Senior Programming Specialist in the United States Army Combat Developments Command Communications-Electronics Agency at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
Between August 28, 1963 and Auguest 5, 1965, my father was recognized to have distinguished himself by exceptional performance of duty and leadership, and use of his broad technical knowledge and extraordinary grasp of the technical details of computer operations to guide the conversion of the Combat Communications Simulation Model from magnetic tapes to one that utilized the disk file for mass storage.
Techniques that the Army stated would have significant and far-reaching effects on the economic feasibility of utilizing and Simulation Model for evaluating future communications-electronics concepts and doctrine developed by the Communications-Electronics Agency.
At the time my father worked on the programs he had no idea that one day his efforts would be part of the start of a communications network that would span the world with all the knowledge of human history and all our dreams for the future. He did, however, live to see what that tangled mess of code would become. And I know that he was awed and amazed by the world wide web and all that it gave to the world. He would be heartbroken to think that the same government that had fifty years ago given him a commendation for his part in bringing the world together might have laws in Congress that would want to black out entire sections of the web from Americans.
My father did not serve his country for over 21 years, and through three major wars, to have the freedoms of his children and grandchildren to utilize the web to its fullest stripped away.
Keep the web free, keep information free.
Stop piracy, but not at the cost of our freedom.