[chadp]

You are absolutely correct, SOPA is totally different in concept for the blocking of sites.

But there are lots of sites and companies that are not alive because the government doesn't allow it. Want to start a video site? sorry, that is regulated. anything to do with online payments? need a license. social network or any communication website. Yup, need a license.

As a foreigner here in China a blocked or crippled internet is zero effect or relevance on daily life. We just VPN out to the "real" Internet daily.

But if SOPA is approved, there may be no more real internet. Not because facebook or big sites will be blocked however. It will be because the government will have the ability to cut innovation and entrepreneurship off by seizing sites at will.

China doesn't allow social networking sites. What will America and Co. not like and allow?

[PakG1]

China has plenty of social networking sites inside of China. China doesn't allow major foreign social networking sites, but they do allow minor foreign social networking sites.

Out of curiosity on that last sentence of mine, I just checked MySpace. It works. If the Chinese government doesn't even care to block it... how the mighty have fallen. :)

[wangweij]

MySpace can be accessed in China because there's very little Chinese using it, at least not using it to do anything the government dislikes. On the other hand, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are totally inaccessible.

Take DropBox for example. At the beginning, there is no problem using it. But when people found out they can publicly share documents there, it was blocked. Now you can still use it as a backup service, but public sharing is not available.

[PakG1]

Yes, my point is that that if MySpace were popular, it could easily be considered the way Facebook is considered.