Marking Period #4

In Fight Over Piracy Bills, New Economy Rises Against Old- Jonathon Weisman, New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/technology/web-protests-piracy-bill-and-2-key-senators-change-course.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&sq=PIPA%20and%20SOPA&st=cse&scp=10

In Jonathon Weisman's essay, the New York Times' columnist addresses the transformation of an old to new economy, where individual citizens are rising up against government legislation. Websites, such as Reddit, Google, and Wikipedia blocked their websites in protest against internet restrictions. Due to widespread protests against the PIPA and SOPA bills, prominent supporters of the bills eventually waned. “The problem for the content industry is they just don’t know how to mobilize people. They have a small group of content makers, a few unions, whereas the Internet world, the social media world especially, can reach people in ways we never dreamed of before."- John Feehery.

The proposition of these two bills greatly impacts modern lives, including myself, because I was born into a technological revolution, where the internet and media dramatically impact my life. With the imposing PIPA and SOPA bills, millions of internet users will no longer be able to access certain web pages- we essentially will be losing our world wide freedom due to government suppression.