As SOPA, PIPA and other Internet bills are discussed by the American governmental bodies, we would like to express our views and clearly side with critics of the proposed bills. We have been using the Internet since its inception and we are grateful to Tim Berners-Lee who created it. It has given us a perfect means of expression and creation.
Therefore it was and still is apparent to anyone that uses the internet for the last 20 years, that its main appeal is the freedom of expression and information. Trying to police the Internet has always been a futile task, since it does not depend on countries and local laws to work. Don’t get us wrong, we are NOT in favour of piracy and use of material without permission. But we also know that we will all loose more if we try to impose strict laws that are implemented by one nation i.e. USA, when there is always a technical way to circumnavigate these online. The servers may be in Antarctica but the online material is in your computer. There is NO way you can effectively police national laws online, unless you do what China and North Korea do, which is to censor search engines results and block unfavourable websites. Does it remind you of anything? Indeed the current American bills.
Why do the ISPs and search engines have to bear the brunt of policing? We find it technically and morally impossible to make search engines responsible for what exists online. They are NOT the internet. The Internet doesn’t not belong to anyone and that is the beauty and attraction to a global community.
We do realise that some of our designs may be copied without permission and probably are in some websites that we are not even aware of. We are honoured that someone loved and used our designs, even without permission. If we pursue them, we will waste time trying to suspend the freedom of the Internet, just to recover some invisible profit. We prefer to spend our time designing more t-shirts. That is why we have over 1000 designs on our shop at this point and our FB fan base is growing day by day.