My name is Rebekah Chung, and I am a university student in
opposition to the SOPA/PIPA bills proposed last year.
I believe that the internet is an important tool for today's
world, and that the censorship threatening it would be intensely
crippling. The free sharing of
information online has been a major factor in developing today's information
age, allowing people to share cultures, intellectual property, and countless
other benefits across the planet. While
internet censorship might protect the property of copyright owners, it would
also change the very culture that those individuals cater to, more than likely
harming them more than piracy and plagiarism ever could.
The internet may house a great amount of injustice towards
copyright owners, but it is also a huge base for the population that buys their
property and on which they are dependent.
Hindering musical communities online would hurt the music industry more
than harm it, severely slowing the spread of artists' names, for one. No advertising campaign will ever be as
effective as the viral spread of material that occurs in online communities.
Even more importantly, the internet is a huge center for
human creativity. In a system where
budding artists are not permitted to experiment and practice with the works of
their literary, artistic, or musical heroes through fanart, fanfiction, and
other such works, many shy, tentative young minds are robbed of the opportunity
to garner critiques and develop their own voices.
To suppose that the majority of fanbased work that comprises
a huge aspect of the internet is a harm to established is a blatant mistake quickly
refuted by any familiarity with the actual dynamic that goes on. Most works online that might be labeled
plagiarism are more comparable to hero-worship than robbery, and the results
are not the usurpation of artists but the spread of their work and names. To cripple this nexus of creativity and
artistic development is to cling to older works at the cost of the future, to
cheat future generations of their potential in favor of what is quickly being
outdated.
"Imitation is the highest form of flattery," it
has often been said. Any artist or
thinker who thinks himself hurt or offended by the works derived from his
pre-established foundations must be in doubt of the impact, quality, and
importance of his work and supremely uninterested in the potential of such work
as a foundation for future development.
To indulge these figures is to indulge those who are more interested in
their personal gain than in the development of humanity, in the progress and
good of his country, and in the development and dynamicism of art itself, in
the case of artists. To indulge these
figures is a crime.
Realize, please, that the internet bears a great
significance on the development of humanity over the coming generations, and
that U.S. censorship would set our country behind the development (artistic,
cultural, intellectual, technological) of the rest of the world. The sharing of information speeds up progress
by offering to everyone the resources they would otherwise have to develop
individually, over and over, redundantly.
Keeping the internet uncensored is not only in the interest of
developing artists, but it is in in the best interests of our country.
So to our representatives, in whom we have placed our confidence... Vote down SOPA/PIPA.
Vote down obsolescence, rust, and stagnancy. Vote to support the creativity of today's
youth and the development of technology.
Vote for internet freedom.
