MoonDog Sports, specifically me, the great and powerful MoonDog, is against SOPA/PIPA – and so is President Obama.
To prove that this issue goes beyond political ideologies, I stand against SOPA/PIPA alongside a president I generally can’t wait to see voted out of office.
I also stand alongside some of the more liberal political action groups in the nation, namely Demand Progress.
You won’t find a more liberal group than them, but I stand with Demand Progress on this issue and many others in fact.
On Monday, President Obama said he would not support the SOPA legislation being brought before the U.S. House today.
Mr. Obama has also stated he would oppose the Protect IP legislation set to be voted on in the U.S. Senate on January 24.
If you aren’t familiar with SOPA and PIPA, they are two separate bills being supported by Hollywood, namely the Motion Picture Association of America.
The legislation is also supported by the Entertainment Software Association and web host GoDaddy.com.
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act) are two bills that amount to nothing more than an attempt to kill the Internet.
Thousands of web sites – including MoonDog Sports – could be forced to shut down if either of these bills passed.
Both SOPA and PIPA attempt to combat online piracy by preventing search engines like Google and Yahoo from directing users to sites distributing stolen content.
But “stolen” is the key word in the legislation. There’s a huge difference between capturing images from a Google search and publishing them on your site as opposed to hacking the originating site.
For the record, MoonDog Sports captures all of the images found on this site from exhaustive search. Whether those images were published illegally or not is a question I can’t answer.
But SOPA and PIPA don’t distinguish a difference. Both bills would enable people and companies to sue if their copyright was infringed.
Technically, despite the fact images on this and thousands of other web sites may have been obtained from the public domain, SOPA and PIPA, if passed into law, could lead to countless lawsuits filed against web site publishers.
If that were to happen, MoonDog Sports and virtually all of the publishers I have come to know over the years would be forced to shut down.
I’ve got too much invested in this site to allow that to happen.
And I’m especially against legislation that impedes my First Amendment rights and I most especially stand in opposition to legislation that is the brain child of Hollywood ninnies.
I’m an ex-military man and one of the things I liked most about the Armed Forces was the fact there were never any gray areas. You knew exactly where you stood every day.
Well, you know where I stand. And if someone doesn’t like that, you can kiss both cheeks of my ass.
Fred J. Vannucci, IV
Publisher, MoonDogSports.com
