Censorship vs. "protection": What's the difference?

From Merinews.com

With all the craziness with Google, Wikipedia, The Oatmeal and others protesting the SOPA/PIPA laws by alerting the public and/or blacking out their sites, it's become quite the topic of conversation. But what's the big deal about it?

Quite a lot, actually. SOPA, or Stop Online Piracy Act, was designed to stop online pirating of music and videos, (always a noble cause) particularly with foreign sites. It would require search engines such as Google and Yahoo to restrict access to torrent sites that are foreign-based, and it also would require advertising markets to keep from servicing these sites.

I believe China does something rather similar (but call me out if I'm wrong) and everyone over here calls that censorship, last time I checked.

SOPA sounds like a good idea, but only in theory. Content protection is always a good cause, and anyone who creates content shouldn't have to worry about their hard work being downloaded by some lazy schmuck for free. But risking the rights to freedom of speech and expression is never a good idea. And one of the provisions of  SOPA shifts the burden of proof of proving copyright infringement from the copyright holder (such as the MPAA) to the copyright violator and his site operator (such as YouTube).  If SOPA and PIPA pass, the possibilities are numerous that some fool will post a video clip or song to demonstrate a point and be sued and/or have his website taken down, without due process, because he "facilitated copyright infringement."

Besides, what business is it of the government to tell people what they can and can't search? They have other screw-ups to attend to, such as the economy and fighting terrorism.

Perhaps the OPEN Act is a good compromise. Punish rogue sites specifically responsible for dedicating themselves to piracy, but don't have it affect everyone on the Web. But it still needs some work.

Thanks to massive protests from the tech industry, SOPA is currently being reworked and won't come up for a committee vote just yet. But its sister bill in the Senate, Protect IP Act, has already passed the committee vote and is expected to hit the entire floor Jan. 24, though some Senators are pushing for a delay.

As a writer, I don't like to see my work plagiarized. But I also don't want to be restricted in my searches of the vast and wonderful Internets.

For more information about these bills, The New York Times, CNET and CNN Money get into further details about SOPA/PIPA. Call or write your legislators today, don't let them decide what you can and can't see on the Internet!