It's the End of the World

Recently I found out from a friend that America is trying to pass 2 acts. If either of them get passed, it may be the end of dubbing as we know it, and I don't mean just in America even though it will only directly affect America. I don't know for sure anything I'm about to say, I only know what my friend told me about and the little bit of information I managed to gather from googling one of the acts.

The first act, and from what I heard of the two, it's the one that's more likely to be passed, is I forgot the name -shot- it's something that has "copyright" in the name. It's not the one I looked up, so I only know what my friend told me, and here's what I understand about it from what she told me. Apparently this act would allow anyone who posts copyrighted infringement online could be sentenced to 5 years in prison. I don't know if the company has to sue or if the police will come hunting you down, but that's all I seemed to get for sure out of what she told me.

The second act would put the whole world into chaos if it were to pass, which is why everyone I asked/told about it said something under the lines of "that will never pass". That act is called the "Protect IP Act" and it, I believe, says that any company would be eligible to sue the owner of a url themself if there's copyrighted stuff on their site. If this act were to pass, it seems any site that has stuff they don't own on it that's based in America will go down. Now the "based in America" my have reassured some of you who don't live in America, but let me name a few websites that you may know that are "based" in America. There's Youtube (Oh look, already one of the most important ones for us dubbers), Facebook, even Google is based in America and is at risk of being closed. I read a blog post online of an organization (I think?) who actually talked to the owner of Google about this act. I liked one of his responses, something under the lines of "trying to solve complex problems with simple solutions will just make more, worse problems". So I really don't think this one will pass, and if it does, it'll probably repell quickly (or whatever they do to get rid of it).

Either way, it seems America is trying to attack the copyright head on right now, and every dubber in the world is in danger, maybe not like us in America who may have to stop dubbing, but definitely of possibly losing dubbing friends or project members, and that's before taking into consideration that if America's trying, what's going to stop other countries from following the lead?

All I'm certain about though, is that if I have to stop dubbing I'm gonna be miserable.