Two bills being voted on next week in the House of Representatives contain language that could censor the Internet in ways you would never imagine.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate are well meaning, but if passed, will be destructive to internet freedoms we’ve all come to expect as well as forces that have helped innovation on the internet flourish. Both pieces of legislation greatly weaken theDigital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which for over a decade has helped Internet companies grow and flourish.

The recording industry, movie studios and television studios are the driving forces behind these bills. We are all very aware of how the music industry ‘s slow and regressive response to digital music backfired while not helping recording artists or the music industry.

Instead of creating better ways to legally download music (as Apple did for them by creating iTunes), their solution was to sue music lovers. Imagine the repercussions of this industry, and the Hollywood studios that have not adapted to how digital innovations have affected their industry, dictating policies that regulate the Internet.

Some of the companies and organizations that have opposed these bills so far include American Express, AOL, Creative Commons, Demand Progress, Discover, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, LinkedIn, MoveOn, Mozilla, OpenDNS, PayPal, Twitter, Visa, Wikimedia Foundation, Yahoo! and Zynga. They are joined by web founders, public interest groups, non-profits, advocacy organizations, thinktanks, industry associations, websites, online services, cybersecurity companies, engineers, international human rights advocates, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, executives, venture capitalists, academics, experts, educators, editorial boards and student newspapers.

Would you rather have these companies and Internet-related professionals determine what’s best for the Internet and its users? We can probably agree that they are more aware of what’s beneficial for the Internet than the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Reddit has announced a blackout on January 18th to protest SOPA and Wikipedia is considering joiningthem. Thousands of people are changing their Twitter and Facebook avatars to include a Blackout SOPAbadge across their face in protest.

SOPA and PIPA aim to help private corporations shut down unauthorized websites where people download music, movies, and TV shows. Most of these websites are outside of America, so these corporations are looking to combat them in a few ways. 1) Block access to infringing domain names. 2) Sue U.S. based search engines, blogs, websites, directories and forums to remove links to these sites. 3) Stop funding these websites by not allowing advertisers to support them.

The consequences that SOPA and PIPA supporters do not mention include: 1) This will not stop downloaders. History has proven this. 2) It will cripple startups by allowing corporations to sue any company they decide is not filtering to their subjective satisfaction. One of these lawsuits can easily bankrupt new websites and search engines that offer competitive alternatives to their corporate brethren. 3) The ambiguous language in PIPA and SOPA leaves plenty of room for misinterpretation that can make websites pioneering new avenues look like pirates. In the past, this could have affected sites like YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook and hundreds of other social sites where people express themselves, organize protests, share news or make art.

The bottom line and main question to ask yourself is, “Do I trust the U.S. government to censor the Internet and protect free expression of its people? And if I do, do I trust other governments who will probably follow suit?” The next question to ask yourself is, “Is it worth the potential of creating a censored internet that is less innovative and stable in order to possibly help the RIAA and MPAA sell more music and movies?”

I strongly recommend contacting your Senators and Congressional Representatives or visiting American Censorship to make your voice heard on these critical bills that can negatively impact the Internet that you use every day. If online activists could make GoDaddy flip its support on SOPA and PIPA, then it can happen with Congress too.

This article was originally posted in Huffington Post

This article was originally published at Oxstein Labs.

It’s a new day in America. With economic cutbacks mixing with technology advancing at light speed, most people are wondering how to keep up.  Throw in an exodus of jobs and people only working at companies for 2 to 3 years instead of 20 and we see a totally different job market than ever before in history.  Like it or not, everyone is a marketer now, even kids.

In the first three weeks of this school year my house was presented with fundraisers from schools and PTA’s for coupon books, a jog-a-thon and selling mattresses.  That’s not a joke, the high school had a mattress selling fundraiser which included pimping out kids to go door to door with flyers and post yard signs announcing “Up to 60% off” of mattresses.  This is how far our country has fallen.

I spoke with teachers about this and they hate it, but said “what can we do?”  Remember when teachers taught school?  Now they are forced to be sales managers directing kids from Kindergarten up to 12th grade to sell crap in order to buy school supplies.  Your kid is forced to do this after you’ve already spent money buying your own kids school supplies and paying taxes that were initially allocated for education.  Teachers and kids are now marketers and salespeople who have quotas to strive for, though they aren’t held accountable for missing them.

Do you remember when the police were mostly fighting crime?  You know, protecting and serving?  Have you noticed that your town feels more like you’re under surveillance than ever before?  Many cities have seen cutbacks lead to  laying off police officers.  The result has been that cops have increased ticket quotas to hit like sales goals.  They are threatened with losing their jobs because of cutbacks in their departments if they don’t make their quotas. These days you are a potential revenue source, a customer, before you are a citizen.

Though I don’t know how to help police officers and school teachers out of their delimma without reallocating federal funds from the defense budget to education and police departments, I know what workers can do. Employees need to realize that even when you don’t own a business, you are now an entrepreneur who must market her services.

If you go to a job interview with the same exact skills as another candidate who has online profiles and content showing off her expertise and you don’t, who do you think is going to get hired?  The other person will land the job simply because they are showing their value in the industry 24/7 online for any recruiter or HR person to review while you are only telling a job history on a resume.

The good news is that there are more ways than ever to build your personal brand to market yourself.  Here are the top three personal branding techniques that every person needs to use:

1. Have an optimized LinkedIn profile.  Just because you’re on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you’re in good shape.  Is your bio full of searchable keywords for recruiters?  Do you have a video?  Do you have recommendations?  Have you recommended others?  Do you have a Twitter feed adding real time content tpo your profile page? Are you answering questions in the Q&A area?  Are you participating in conversations happening in the Groups aligned with your industry?  If you need help with this look no further than Mike O’Neill and Lori Ruff‘s book, “Rock the World with Your Online Presence.”

2.  Start a blog. Blogs are where people share their interests, their passions and their expertise.  If you like to write, then use WordPress.  If you prefer short snippets of writing, photos and videos, you can blog on Posterous or Tumblr easier than you can dial a phone.

3.  Comment on the blogs that are the most popular in your industry.  Search AllTop or BlogSearch.Google.com with keywords used in your industry to find the best blogs.  Leave comments on articles where you have something of value to add to the conversation.  This can help you to build a relationship with experts in your field and it leaves a permanent comment that is like a sales person working 24/7 to share the fact that you have valuable skills with the world.

The 21st century is a time when you will lose ground in your career if you do not create a personal brand and market yourself.  Like it or not, it’s time to be the best marketer of you that you can imagine.

The times they are a changin’…

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