PAUL TASSI: How SOPA Could Ruin My Life.

Hi, my name is Paul, and I’m a small business owner. But my storefront isn’t quite of the traditional variety. Rather, it’s a virtual one, a website I built from scratch, and currently own and operate. . . . It’s a movie/tv/video game site that I started with a partner about three years ago. Since then, it’s grown to averaging between 2.8 and 3.2 million page views a month. Not a giant, but not bad for two people, and with ad revenue, it’s enough to live on.

But that might not be the case if the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) passes. My virtual small business, along with many others like it, might be history.

Why is this? Am I a pirate, who feeds my users stolen content every day and deserves to be slain by a new law like this? Not at all, and this is the fundamental problem with SOPA and other prospective laws like it (Protect IP most recently). . . . The fine print of the law says sites that distribute copyrighted content could be subject to summary censorship, ie Torrent sites and the like. But it also encompasses any sites that LINK to copyrighted content, which is the bomb that blows up any semblance of sense this bill might have had. . . . Watching the House debate this bill yesterday was beyond pathetic. These representatives, if they deserve to be called that, have no idea the amount of power they’re giving the entertainment industry. Or maybe they do, as most of their pockets are lined with donations from media behemoths, and have been for years in the hopes that someday, they might pass a law like this.

Tar. Feathers.