Everyone deserves to get paid for their work. SOPA, funded by movie studios, tv studios, recording studios, and big pharma*, is not the way to accomplish it. H.R.3261 is so broad that any number of websites can be blocked, including sites like this one. The links and content you share will be monitored. Regular users, like you or someone you know, can be sentenced with a felony with up to five years in prison for recording a funny video of your dog with music playing in the background that you didn’t pay to commercially license. Even though you’re not selling it. Even though it’s incidental to the video. Possibly even if it’s a parody. Sure, it will cut down on the number of awful karaoke videos you see online, but it’s still not worth it.

Aside from the negative side effects of someone being able to slap you with a felony record when you’ve done nothing wrong, loss of privacy, and changing the face of the internet, H.R.3261 also stands to have a major negative effect on tech sector jobs. This bill is so far reaching that even even libraries are at risk. If you like this site or any other site on the internet or if you think the library is nifty or that karaoke is awesome, I would encourage you to please contact your congressperson and tell them that as their constituent, you don’t support H.R.3261. The sooner, the better. You can find out more information on the bill and how to contact your congressperson on americancensorship.org.

*This is what happens when you throw congresspeople thousands and thousands of dollars. They fall all over themselves in a rush to serve the needs of the few, to count corporations as people, to make pizza a vegetable. They will not look out for our interests unless we stand up and ask to be recognized. And when you do make yourself heard, try to be polite about it–no one wants to listen to or help a jerk.