The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill before Congress that could very well affect every internet user in one form or the other. Its primary purpose is to prevent the spread and use of pirated, aka stolen or illegal, material across the web. However, the methods for doing so are proving to be more than a bit controversial.
The act itself would give power to the United States government to require ISPs to, “…prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site…” (in common language, block access to a website that has been deemed/flagged as containing “pirated” or otherwise licensed material). The government could also force search providers to remove any link to a website that has been flagged for containing illegal material, force payment processors to shut down the ability for offending sites thus preventing them from making money, and to prevent internet advertisers from doing business with an infringing site.
This means that if SOPA passes, if a website contains even a snippet of material that is not properly obtained or used in regards to the law the entire site could be blocked.
This doesn’t mean that if someone posts a video they made with their favorite music artists top track in the background to Facebook that just the video/post is removed. It would be the entire website that would be blocked.
This puts websites like Reddit, 4chan, and any number of social networks at risk, not to mention the numerous offshore torrent sharing sites like Pirate Bay.
SOPA has a large number of both proponents and opponents, though the largest supporters are the film and music industry who have been trying for years to better protect their products via government legislation. Gizmodo has provided a list of all supporting companies. Among the supporters of SOPTA are TV networks like NBC, CBS, ESPN, along with many other fixtures of the entertainment industry.
Standing against SOPA, however, are almost every major technology corporation including (not surprisingly) Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia. A full list of SOPA opponents can be found here (via TechCrunch). There are already a number of popular movements against the bill, including Youtube songs, and just last week the hosting site GoDaddy suffered a record loss of customers as people moved their sites away due to GoDaddy’s support of SOPA.
Without a doubt SOPA is one of the more pressing legal issues facing Internet users at the moment. I encourage everyone to learn about it. Contact your local congressman or congresswoman by clicking right here to express your feelings about SOPA.
For more information about the bill take a look here