I’ve thought about that too. And it was comforting at first, but then I thought of radio. Radio used to be less restrictive, with many smaller stations. In the seventies it wasn’t so difficult for small radio stations to offer differing voices. Then, slowly, the FCC’s restrictions favoring corporations began to take effect. Radio today is garbage: the least offensive songs anyone overplayed ad infinitum, backed by “radio personalities” who say nothing of substance as offensively as possible. But you probably know that.
If SOPA passed, at first only the torrent streaming sites would go away. Then it would be the music sites that don’t have label deals. Radical political sites would probably start to disappear next, but who reads those? Not most Americans.
Eventually, Americans would become accustomed to the idea that the Internet isn’t supposed to have everything. They would become accustomed to going to sites that have the money to make deals with all the copyright holders. Remember there are still to this day people who think AmericaOnline is the Internet. Our adaptability is our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.
And it’s making me feel a lot better.
Because millions, literally millions, of teenagers and twenty-somethings would go protest. Because we would have nothing else to do. And we would protest 24 hours a day, because some of us are awake all the time. And we would stand outside congresspeople’s offices with signs that were memes and they would be so confused and scared. And we will all be really pissed, and we will all be really bored, and that combination will be very very bad for them. So I’m less worried now. Maybe this whole thing is just a ploy by some well-meaning representatives who want to get young people more involved in the political process.
