Forget tobacco companies, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Christian right.
The Internet is the biggest political powerhouse mover-and-shaker lobbyist these days. It also happens to be one of the biggest hot-button political issues as well as the battleground where the war is being fought.
And here you thought the Internet was only good for emailing Auntie Matilda pictures of the kids, watching videos on YouTube and maybe downloading a Katy Perry song or two.
But it is precisely those YouTube videos, and where you might be downloading your music from, that's causing all the waves in the Web surfing community.
The United States House of Representatives recently introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), legislation designed to block access to sites containing unauthorized copyright material.
Essentially these pieces of legislature would allow content owners (like movie studios, and record labels) to easily request court orders to shut down sites associated with piracy and have those sites pulled from search engine results, among other things.
And I'm talking about online piracy, like downloading bootleg copies of a movie from somewhere - not the Yo-Ho-Ho, pegleg-type.
So it all sounds good and fair, right?
But while groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) supported the U.S. Congress's bills, it quickly became apparent that the Internet did not approve of the legislation's sweeping powers.
Opponents say the proposed legislation threatens free speech and innovation, and enables law enforcement to block access to entire Internet domains because of infringing material posted on a single blog or webpage. Library associations have expressed concerns that the bill's emphasis on stronger copyright enforcement would expose libraries to prosecution.
I got that last paragraph from Wikipedia - the online user-created reference tool - but I wouldn't have been able to do that this past Wednesday (Jan. 18), because it went offline, along with a number of other sites, in protest of SOPA.
For an entire day, students, journalists and researchers worldwide had to actually walk over to a bookshelf and open - gasp! - a book.
A couple of weeks before, No. 1 U.S.-based Web-hosting firm Go Daddy faced a massive boycott of its services (meaning people were willing to cancel and transfer their sites to another company) just for supporting SOPA.
You can bet Go Daddy did a U-turn on its support faster than green grass through a goose.
The Wikipedia blackout had the same sort of effect on U.S. senators, apparently, as after the protest a bunch of them - including the bill's co-sponsors Marco Rubio from Florida and Roy Blunt from Missouri - decided they just didn't like the legislation as much anymore.
But despite the seeming victory, techies are still worried the anti-piracy laws could get rushed through Congress, although even the White House has said it is not in support of the legislation, so Obama could still use his veto.
But online piracy is indeed a huge problem, and one that costs everyone with increased prices on movies and music to offset the losses from illegal and unauthorized content.
So it is great that everyone is concerned.
But most in the online world agree these particular pieces of legislation should be set aside, and future legislation of this kind be drafted by people who actually understand how the Internet works, and how to keep it working - freely.
