As you may or may not know, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is gaining popularity. With its newly found popularity comes the people for and against it. Luckily for us, we have Developers on the internet's side (against). In measures to stop SOPA dead in their tracks, developers have created an Android app that tells you if you are purchasing an item that is SOPA supported or intimately involved with SOPA. One of the major supports is GoDaddy, and since announcing they support it, they have lost over 21,000 domain users in a day. As you can tell, the internet is serious business.
The anti-SOPA movement is gaining momentum. The main goal of the movement is to hit them where it hurts — their wallets.
What SOPA is aimed at doing is stopping the distribution of paid and copyrighted information and products, also known as pirating.
That provides a massive problem.
Pirating websites or pro-pirating websites, are a big part of internet life. Getting leaks to the latest music, trial products, and even books, is an important part of the internet for many people. websites like piratebay.org have been sued multiple times and get hate-mail on a regular basis.
Were they successfully sued? No. pirating sites are strictly hosting sites, the users that upload the content for distributing are the people that are sharing what they have.
Now that I got off topic to educated the people that I'm sure don't need it (sorry), back to anti-SOPA's Android app.
Although it is brand new, and I'm talking days new, Boycott SOPA has over a thousand downloads and 4.5 star rating. The app has over 800 brands of all different products and is rapidly growing, to ensure you that you do not assist the financial security of the SOPA supporters.
The only requirement, besides allowing internet access to connect to their site's database, is Barcode Scanner on an Android device. According to the developers of Boycott SOPA, the app makes a single request to access their database to see if the product is support or unsupported, and that is it. The connection does not go anywhere else.
If you have any thoughts or concerns about SOPA or the whole process, email me at jryanwhitney[at]yahoo[dot]com.
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