Back in early 2000 I had the fortune of providing temporary hosting for a website called daterape.org. If you google the quoted "daterape.org" you can read some of the controversy that went around the globe in discussing this site.
(for quick-access, here are two differing views:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/03/34941
http://www.fitug.de/debate/0003/msg00737.html
I'd like you to take particular note of the second link)
For my part, I believed the website to be a satire.
sat·ire noun /ˈsaˌtīr/ The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues
It was SO over the top and in your face, how anyone could see it as something other than satire is mind-boggling to me. The first link up there gives you a pretty good idea of what was on the site. But it fails to mention some of the other things on the site -- like, directions to boys on their first date, including, for example, how to dismantle the inside of the car door handle so that it will open only from the outside. This one was a complete shocker to me! I had been on many internet dates, as I was twenty years old in the year 2000, but I had never in my wildest dreams conjured up the idea that I should check that the car I am getting into could be opened from the inside, after I was in -- I just assumed this was a given.
This website, from its first 500 viewers, managed to garner national and eventually global attention. What were people talking about? Several issues -- many of them were talking about the disgusting nature of the website, others were talking about freedom of speech on the internet, but one thing was being discussed that generally got very little air time: date rape.
Unfortunately, no matter the campaigns in high school, date rape is still extremely under reported, even though statistics show that it occurs frequently. According to safecity.ca a 1993 survey of female undergraduates at Canadian universities reported that "four out of five women said that they had been victims of violence in a relationship". That is 80% of the female populous, without taking into account men or same-sex partnerships.
This was just seven years before the 2000 website daterape.org came online. Who was daterape.org educating about the realities of daterape? Was it the offenders? Because with a pervasive influence such as 4 out of 5, it seems to me like the abusers already had it under control. But the victims? The victims could certainly use some widely spread information that the abusers already knew. Some insider notes, so to speak.
It is 2012 and you may be asking, why am I bringing up such an odd story from over a decade ago and how does this really relate to SOPA? This daterape.org incident is just one of many. It happens to be one I was personally involved in and so I can speak to it directly. The SOPA bill, in its transparency, fails to be simply about online piracy. Its title "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes." already tosses in the 'other purposes' clause. The first wave of internet censorship is not a solitary wave -- it will be followed by many more and potentially a tidal wave that cripples internet uses entirely.
If free speech and expression are no longer allowed on the internet, where will we turn?
A site like daterape.org is controversial -- but sometimes it takes a controversy to wake up the masses and get them talking about real issues. Date rape is a big issue that gets brushed under the rug far too often. Free speech on the internet is one that keeps getting set aside and its proponents are wide and varied. Some feel that free speech is just a given -- why are we fighting, we can't actually ever LOSE that right, can we? And others feel that H.R. 3261 or S. 968 are about business, they don't have anything to do with free speech.
It has been said, if you lose all your other rights, it is with free speech that you can win them back, conversely, without free speech you will lose all your other rights.
I invite people to get informed and be active about which side you are on.
