At first, the question seems like a ludicrous one but surprisingly the answer is yes. By the end of 2012, the most popular and powerful open-source publishing solution ever made … might be dead.
Insanity you say, and I would agree except for a re-tweet by Nacin this morning, from WordPress core developer Aaron Jorbin: “Why is @Politico honouring the sponsors of the Stop Online Piracy Act as ‘policymakers of the year in technology’?” Aaron’s article is in itself interesting but more interesting is a link to Piracy bill could waylay FLOSS projects, which details two new bills: PROTECT IP (S. 968) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (HR. 3261), that are being considered at the moment.
Essentially, the bills boil down to this … piracy is bad.
You can agree or disagree with that statement but what the bill allows for is copyright holders to order the removal of websites it believes to be violating their copyright (note: they don’t need to prove a violation, only accuse a site of copyright violation) to be taken offline, de-indexed by search engines, have their ad revenues cancelled and payment gateways shutdown.
Then it gets ugly.
The bill also allows for the same copyright holders to do the same to any tool they believe is facilitating the infringement of their copyright (again, no proof required). Let’s be clear about that … you build a website and share a copy of a copyrighted work such as a YouTube video or paragraph from a copyrighted work, then the copyright holder orders not only your website but also the tools (i.e. WordPress) that you used to build your website to be punished.
So you tell me, if these bills pass … could WordPress be dead in 2012, or is Yahoo just overreaching?
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