Wikipedia has announced that it will stage a blackout for 24 hours on the 18^th of January in protest to the new suggested copyright legislation in the US.

In a nutshell the laws mean that if a website, lets use Wikipedia as an example, are found to contain any copyright infringing content, they can immediately be shut down. For sites like Wikipedia especially, which works by volunteers submitting information, this would mean that they could be shut down without even knowing they had infringing content on their site. This rings true for social media sites as well. Take Facebook for example which has millions of contributors, the whole website could be shut down on the premises that one of its users has placed infringing content on the site.

Is this not just another way to control and monitor the populace? What happened to freedom of speech? Sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, Facebook and many more give voice to the people. The Occupy Wall street movement wouldn't have been anywhere near as effective if it wasn't for social media and other sites such as You Tube that enabled the message to spread like wildfire across the globe.

Think about us here in Australia. If the government starts shutting down, websites and heavily regulating the Internet where will we get our news and information from? Nine MSN perhaps? It seems no coincidence that through these new laws the power of the Internet will be given directly to the people it has been used to protest against.

During the cold war era when the threat of communism loomed large over the western, capitalist way of life, anyone that would question the merits or fairness of a capitalist society could easily be branded a traitor. Therefore people were afraid to protest or speak out against the unequal distribution of wealth. Today after the fall of the Soviet Block and China increasingly becoming capitalist in nature, this old method of control, branding anyone who spoke out as a communist, has become obsolete. This is why we are seeing new methods of control such as the copyright infringement legislation laws designed to protect and help the one per cent. This law in particular is disguised as an effort to help the entertainment industry, flagged as a method of cutting down illegal downloads on the Internet. However once you scratch the surface of said legislation it becomes clear that in reality it is just another method of censorship and control.

If this law is passed it will directly affect Australian online businesses that sell to the US and as is often the case, how soon after will Australia follow in its big brothers footsteps? If this law is passed it will be a grave injustice to the progress that has been made in the western world on the freedom of speech. If it is passed what comes next? Making all forms of protest illegal perhaps? No more strikes, no more peaceful protests, no more occupy Wall Street movement, just censorship and control and power for the one per cent.