SOPA Rant - Guest Writer Jillian Schaffner Age 15

Today I opened up my Facebook® page to see a post on one of my friends’ statuses. “Maybe SOPA is just to get young adults interested in politics?” Maybe they’re right, but I don’t think that they are. You see cigarette and tobacco companies are sneakier than the government in one way; they target a younger crowd. If a tobacco company can get a teenager hooked then they have most likely just promised themselves another life long customer. The government could use this to their advantage with even better results, because voting will never be anyone’s cause of death.

Why would any Politician support a bill that will set an ENTIRE generation against them? Like everyone else my age, I have never lived without instant communication. It is all that we know. I can be in contact with every friend I have no matter where they live and all at once. The entire Wikipedia® website had a blackout for a full day to show that they are against SOPA. GOOGLE® blacked out its logo. Maybe there are people whom this will directly harm, but there are more people that are enraged by just the idea of SOPA and PIPA. I don’t know everything about the law, but to think that it can allow one country to make laws that affect billions of people all over the globe is unbelievable to me.

My best friend’s littlest sister is four years old and she has Down’s Syndrome. This little girl is currently in playschool, but reads at a grade two level. Her parents would never have been able to help her as much as they have without the help they found on the Internet. Neither would they have been able to help so many others through blogs and facebook and email. This family has two iPads in their household, as well as three iPods, an iPhone, and multiple computers. Do you know what we put on these devices?

Apps.

Applications created by people for people. This little girl has countless apps on her family’s devices that help her to read, write, count, and learn. How can anyone want to make a law to stop her from learning this way?

If SOPA is passed she will no longer have access to apps from the USA, and if Bill C-11 in Canada is passed, anywhere else. Anyone can make an app, because that is the world that we live in. In this world we can have a thousand channels and get magazines online. We can make anything we want, because we can find the facts online. Just because the media wants to make money and they are scared that just about anyone can publish themselves is NO reason to pass a bill. How many of these politicians use GOOGLE®, Wikipedia®, YAHoo®, or any others. On Twitter® you can even follow politicians that you are interested in. Why would they want this to end?

When I was at camp last summer and at the end of the week, everyone shares their contact information. When one of the girls asked if anybody had Facebook®, the entire group laughed and rolled their eyes. Of course we do.

My Social Studies textbook states that North American countries pride themselves on having free trade and good relations.

How can we have free trade of goods but not information?

...Jillian

Jillian with her brother Max before a gig in December.