If you have been surfing the web lately, you may have noticed many websites and people pleading to web-users to help join the fight against SOPA. You may ask, what is SOPA? No, it’s not Mexican soup. SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) is a bill that was introduced back in October 26, 2011 by United States Representative and Texan Republican Lamar S. Smith. The ideal purpose of SOPA is to allow intellectual property (IP) owners, such as movie studios and record labels, to immediately and effectively shut down foreign sites that have a copyright of theirs. For example, if Warner Bros. states that a foreign site is streaming a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could easily demand that Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and even prevent people from gaining access to it. In its original conception, it even allowed IP owners to do this without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. But that isn’t the worst part.
Thriving websites that act as “payment processors” and “content providers” such as Visa or YouTube don’t even send a letter at all to shut off a site’s resources. Apparently, the bill has some “vigilante provision” that allows providers who actively shutter any sites that they consider to be “infringers.” So that means that IP owners like the MPAA just need to publicize a list of “infringing” sites to get them taken off the Internet.
But you might be asking yourself, how does this affect me at all? Well, it greatly affects your digital life. First off, these higher-status IPs could easily abuse their “vigilante provision.” For example, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist EVERY viral video that it finds to be “offensive” or “riddled with copyright infringement.” In most circumstances, major IPs could even do this without asking for permission.
However, the factor that perhaps affects your entire cyber life is the “anti-circumvention” clause. This clause states that working around the main provisions enacted by SOPA (in other words, finding “loop-holes”), is as bad as violating its main laws. If certain sites, most notably YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, are somehow connected to other foreign sites, they could face possible government charges. They would shut down.
“…PIPA and SOPA, at their heart, are censorship bills and blacklisting bills, and they undermine much of the architecture of the Internet,” states Senator of Oregon Ron Wyden, a major supporter for the fight against SOPA.
There are also other introduced laws that are considered in lieu with SOPA. The most famous is PIPA (PROTECT IP Act), as mentioned above. It is basically the same law as SOPA. Also, it is a revision of a previous law called COICA (Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act), which functioned similarly to SOPA.
Thankfully, both SOPA and PIPA have been temporarily postponed until the idea for a draft can be passed. Only time will tell if these will be controlling factors in our lives.
Thriving websites that act as “payment processors” and “content providers” such as Visa or YouTube don’t even send a letter at all to shut off a site’s resources. Apparently, the bill has some “vigilante provision” that allows providers who actively shutter any sites that they consider to be “infringers.” So that means that IP owners like the MPAA just need to publicize a list of “infringing” sites to get them taken off the Internet.
But you might be asking yourself, how does this affect me at all? Well, it greatly affects your digital life. First off, these higher-status IPs could easily abuse their “vigilante provision.” For example, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist EVERY viral video that it finds to be “offensive” or “riddled with copyright infringement.” In most circumstances, major IPs could even do this without asking for permission.
However, the factor that perhaps affects your entire cyber life is the “anti-circumvention” clause. This clause states that working around the main provisions enacted by SOPA (in other words, finding “loop-holes”), is as bad as violating its main laws. If certain sites, most notably YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, are somehow connected to other foreign sites, they could face possible government charges. They would shut down.
“…PIPA and SOPA, at their heart, are censorship bills and blacklisting bills, and they undermine much of the architecture of the Internet,” states Senator of Oregon Ron Wyden, a major supporter for the fight against SOPA.
There are also other introduced laws that are considered in lieu with SOPA. The most famous is PIPA (PROTECT IP Act), as mentioned above. It is basically the same law as SOPA. Also, it is a revision of a previous law called COICA (Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act), which functioned similarly to SOPA.
Thankfully, both SOPA and PIPA have been temporarily postponed until the idea for a draft can be passed. Only time will tell if these will be controlling factors in our lives.