beishlinetopictalk

List five facts that you already know about this topic: 4. The Congressman at the forefront of the push for internet censorship is Lamar Smith 5. After SOPA and PIPA were shelved, Congressman Smith wrote a similar act that limits privacy by forcing ISP’s to track user information for a year or more.
 * Topic Choice: Internet Censorship**
 * 1) The entertainment industry has been lobbying Congressmen and Senators to pass bills that would grossly increase the punishments for hosting or sharing any copyrighted material over the iternet.
 * 2) This isn’t only happening in America. All across Europe similar legislation is being proposed and coming even closer to passing.
 * 3) Protests my multiple sites delayed the passing of such bills in America until they are revised or dropped.


 * Answer these questions about this topic:**

How did it/will it impact the world? I believe it may seem like nothing at first, but in the end it’s another form of control being instilled to prevent people from having access to free knowledge

Why is there still interest in it today, or why will there continue to be interest in it? There is a huge amount of interest in it today, as the topic has really hit a peak in the past 6 months, and most likely will continue to do so.

Why are you interested in researching this topic? I spend probably 75% of my free time on the internet (NOT FACEBOOK) trying to learn different things, or just look at funny cat pictures for a couple hours. If they took down half the sites I frequent, I’d end up having to find a new hobby.

How do you personally connect with this topic? Well I plan on having a computer sciences job, which could very well involve working at a server bank for random websites. If one of those sites hosts copyrighted material on the server, there’s a good chance my company could even be held responsible for it if the legislation passes.

What resources do you think will be useful to you? Specific books? Series of books? Magazines? Periodicals? Interviews? Internet sites? Films? Other?
 * Resources**

I think a majority of the research will be done on credible internet new sites. There aren’t many books written on the internet, as it’s only been around for 20 years, let alone internet censorship, which has been a hot topic for less than a year. If I had to find a book that relates it’d have to be on a politician who wrote a book recently that may have touched on the subjecct. I’ve read my fair share of articles online to know most of them are extremely bias to one side. It may be difficult to find an honest opinion, and may have to pick from both sides and form my own.