Pipa and Sopa
What are they? Pipa is the Protect IP Act and Sopa is
Stop Online Piracy Act. What those mean is Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) who
introduced the SOPA bill. Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a proposed law that
was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26,
2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX)
and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The PROTECT IP Act
is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in
2010. A similar House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was introduced on October
26, 2011.
Those two
bills are why one day in 2012 Google and lots of other websites shut down
because of Pipa and Sopa. I would not want the bills to pass because if they
did YouTube would be shut down. They are just like an online police force,
because they want to stop people from taking things illegally.
The bills
are intended to strengthen protections against copyright infringement and
intellectual property theft, but Internet advocates say they would stifle
expression on the World Wide Web. In essence, the legislation has pitted
content providers -- like the music and film industries -- against Silicon
Valley. CBS Corporation is among the media and entertainment companies that
support the legislation. "It's not a battle of left versus right,"
said progressive activist Adam Green, whose organization Progressive Change
Campaign Committee on Tuesday hosted a press conference with opponents of the
bills. "Frankly, it's a battle of old versus new."
Here's a
basic look at the actions taking place today and the legislation causing all
the fuss.
These bills are targeted
at "rogue" websites that allow indiscriminate piracy, but use vague
definitions that could include hosting websites such as Dropbox, MediaFire, and
Rapidshare; sites that discuss piracy such as pirate-party.us, p2pnet, Torrent
Freak, torproject.org, and ZeroPaid; as well as a broad range of sites for
user-generated content, such as SoundCloud, Etsy, and Deviant Art. Had these
bills been passed five or ten years ago, even YouTube might not exist today —
in other words, the collateral damage from this legislation would be enormous. Originally, both bills provided two methods for fighting
copyright infringement on foreign websites. In one method, the U.S. Department
of Justice could seek court orders requiring Internet service providers to
block the domain names of infringing sites. For example, Comcast could prevent
its customers from accessing thepiratebay.org, although the underlying IP
address would still be reachable. This ISP-blocking
provision was a major concern among Internet security experts, and
both SOPA and PIPA have dropped it. That sounds about right, given the recent turn of events
over
the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy
Act
(SOPA), both of which are now more than likely gone from the legislative
calendar
for this year. In truth, if Silicon Valley and Hollywood were the only
combatants, it wouldn't be much of a war. Hollywood would win every time. In
this case, the spontaneous outpouring of opposition from around the country,
combined with diligent work from groups in Washington, turned the tide. I think
this is right because we need to agree with the government.
For more reading go to www.cbsnews.com/news/sopa-pipa-what-you-need-to-know/
and https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill
and http://www.pcworld.com/article/248298/sopa_and_pipa_just_the_facts.html
and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-brodsky/pipa-and-sopa-were-stoppe_b_1230818.html and
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