Miss Adventures

I am guilty of getting online in the morning, logging on to my Facebook and thinking to myself, “How many people will take this status update the wrong way?” Then, I brush off my apprehension, say, “F**k it,” and write whatever in the blue hell I want to write anyway. Things will get sorted out when I die. And, if I believed in hell, I sincerely doubt a Facebook status would be the thing that landed me in the devil’s lap. So if you get offended all I have to offer is a very sarcastic, “Boo bloody hoo hoo.”

But, you see, this is why I love the internet. This kind of creative freedom is the beauty of an uncensored, unfettered, unrestricted cyberspace paradise. Users are free to contribute whatever they want, night or day, regardless of how redundant, annoying or stupid it may appear to onlookers. (Yes, I'm talking you who posts nothing but motivational quotes and pictures of food all day). There is no shrinking space, suddenly, mystically overfilled with content. The net is infinite, unfillable. Something infinite was designed to exist without restrictions. Certainly without the bane of censorship.

Censorship is the thing banned books are made of. It is an archaic notion that the imposed morality of a few is applicable to the masses. I can show you at least a million reasons why that idea is fallible, but whether or not you agree with me is immaterial. You see, censorship, in any form, is a violation of our first amendment right. If we are stripped of that, we can be stripped of every other inalienable right our forefathers died to protect. That isn’t the America I signed up for. It isn’t the America I vote in, either. As long as I am acting within the letters of the law, the internet should not be my captor, my guardian or my prison soap.

The problem, however, is now two fold. The politicians that were trying to sneak this piece of legislation by, now can’t. At least not under the SOPA/PIPA umbrella.

We live in a technologically centric world. You can’t go anywhere these days without seeing someone’s smart phone surgically grafted to their palm --like me. This interconnectivity breeds knowledge and awareness; knowledge and awareness that politicians and fat cats find reprehensible.

Once shrouded in secrecy and shadow, these doers of dirty deeds and back alley handshakes find that today (and everyday) is judgment day; at least in the court of public opinion. If the government is able to infiltrate the net under the guise of censorship, the public would be catapulted back to the dark ages, listening to vicars of the constitution, forced to have information spoon fed to them as opposed to seeking it out for themselves. From there, talk radio would begin to disappear, voices would be silenced, and the public would be pushed back into a bland world of ignorance and darkness. I don’t want that. Neither should you.

Now, the politicians will attempt to pass the bill under a different name, because they know that we (by and large) don’t read past the headlines. The SOPA/PIPA bill will become the “Anti-Child Pornography Act” and in it, will be peppered the hidden internet censorship legislation, just as there has been hidden legislation in acts before it --the “American Jobs Act,” “Patriot Act” and “Clean Air Act” are perfect examples. You weren’t being asked to vote for clean air, patriotism or jobs in a single one of these proposed bills, not really, but you were led to believe you were a villain if you opposed them. This is just another chapter in business-as-usual politics.