
Yesterday SOPA Ireland, a law the power for judges to force Internet Service Providers to block websites took effect. The law follows the example of many other countries who similarly block websites for various reasons including child porn, phishing and copyright infringement. Inevitably these black lists are kept secret and when they are leaked to the public they inevitably contain web sites with perceivable legitimate reason for being on the blacklist.
So while this is about copyright today, it reduces our internet freedom, future generations of Irish men and women will likely never come to expect the same freedom on the internet that we enjoy today.
Today Sean Sherlock, the minister responsible for it’s introduction called for those opposed to copyright law to call off the dogs. I’m opposed to copyright law and the most I’ve ever done in relation to Irish SOPA is go to a protest. Maybe he could clarify what he meant?
He mentioned that people shouldn’t refer to this as the Irish version of SOPA, I don’t understand his point of view, SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act, the Irish law is designed to stop online piracy by blocking websites, so is SOPA. What exactly makes these laws different except their wording?
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