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EXPERT DIY TIPS
Internet Censorship


You might think this alarm is only for tech-geeks but the “drama” going on with the Internet is and will affect you and the rest of the world on a large scale. The internet existed in 1969 but it wasn’t till the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 that three years later in 1991 it was finally implemented. So today the Internet like every 21 year old is causing some trouble with your freedom to search as well as be heard!

One of the most political charged bills on capital hill today is PROTECT-IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. As with the name of just about every bill which actually does the OPPOSITE of what the name says, both of these bills can establish a censorship system using the same technologies China and Iran use to censor their people. Life on the Internet could be made very difficult for smaller companies and start-ups but very lucrative for corporations. Many online companies are protesting including Tumblr, WordPress and AOL, Google, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Yahoo! to name a few.

Most recently Google is causing controversy with the launch of its personalized on the company’s social network Google+ (G+) but not include search results from Twitter. Not only did this ruffle twitters feathers but the Federal Trade Commission sees the launch of Google’s social network as relevant to its investigation into whether Google is violating antitrust laws by giving its own services favorable treatment.

So what is the impact on what we know today as something that takes up most of our time? The internet is definitely going thru its growing pains. No one truly foresaw the power the internet has had on the spread of information to countries revolting. But today there is a humongous fork in the road that can keep us on our path to making a better world OR locks us in an additional level of corporate corruption.

One of the main principles of the Internet is open source, a philosophy that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details. Thats why we have progressed with the internet so quickly. With the new bills and ways of searching trying to be implemented today, the freedom that kept us progressing might soon change.

So what can you do? There are numerous petitions just about everywhere. Go to Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist and SIGN THE PETITION!

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