The Internet May Be In Trouble. Big Trouble.

The internet as we know it is in trouble. The “PROTECT IP Act” or S. 968 in the Senate and the “Stop Online Piracy Act” or H.R. 3261 in the House are two very real threats to what we've come to know as the biggest open source place for information; the internet.

The PROTECT IP Act , and the Stop Online Piracy Act, give the government the right to blacklist domains that they think infringe upon copyright laws. While this may not sound like a bad thing, it opens up a number of problems. It gives the government the ability to bully sites like Google, Yahoo, and a number of others [even social media] into censoring their information and taking down links at command, under penalty of lawsuit. It takes sites with good intention, such as file hosting services, and shuts them down due to copyrighted content uploaded by an individual [lets face it, with the millions of users on most of those sites, they can't monitor, no matter how hard they try].

It can also stop small web-based startups from making business, and put regular people in prison for up to five years/get them heavy fines simply for having a copyrighted song in the background of a video they post to Youtube.

To learn more about these bills, here's a short video explaining a bit more about them, and what they mean to us:

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

If you would like to contact a representative, and let them know you are against these bills, here's a helpful link that will connect you to the right person: http://www.tumblr.com/protect-the-net 

Your voice will be heard.

Don't be afraid to call; they're really nice. =)

Patents "Grab"

Nowadays, in the ever expanding world of technology, manufacturers of tablets, smartphones, and touchscreen devices have been running into more and more lawsuits over patents. To counter this issue and cover their ground when it comes to their products, most companies have a very thorough legal department that investigates a new device before it is built, making sure there are no patents out there that could cover it and that it is not infringing on any copyrights, etc. Another thing many companies have started to do, however, is buying patents from other companies, businesses, individuals, etc.

The more patents the company owns, the more rights to technological designs, innovations, and ideas they have, which gives them an upper hand as it both protects them from legal issues of that nature and it gives them the rights to something no-one else has [excluding the creator of the patent who may retain rights to having come up with the idea].

What does this all mean?

If you have a good idea for something that could be applied to a smartphone or tablet, you may want to check and see if it is out there yet. Chances are, your idea could be worth something to the right people. Who knows; maybe your idea could turn into the next big thing!

in·no·va·tion

   [in-uh-vey-shuhn]  Show IPA

noun

1.

something new or different introduced: numerous innovationsin the high-school curriculum.

2.

the act of innovating; introduction of new things ormethods.