SOPA
By: Candice Watts
For as long as people have been freely surfing the worldwide web, there have been arguments over copyright infringement and financial loses.
SOPA or the Stop Online Priacy Act is a bill introduced on October 26th, 2011. The bill was proposed by Texas Republican Lamar S. Smith, to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. In other words, SOPA would make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. The bill, if made into a law, would also allow rights holders to cut off the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means if a website has a tool that provides users to post information, such as YouTube.com or Tumblr.com, and the posted information exhibits copyright infringement, any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop, including search engines and advertising companies.
On Wednesday, January 18th, there was the largest online protest in history, when Google.com got over seven million people to sign petitions against the bill. Other websites such as Wikipedia.com and its British partner Reddit.com organized an Internet ‘black-out’ which cut off their services for a day and replaced them with a link to contact your local senator.
After a heated protest, Senator Smith decided to postpone endeavors to draft the bill. This was seen as a “win” for the Internet and the 7 million people that protested against one of what could have been the worst move on the government's part.
By: Candice Watts
For as long as people have been freely surfing the worldwide web, there have been arguments over copyright infringement and financial loses.
SOPA or the Stop Online Priacy Act is a bill introduced on October 26th, 2011. The bill was proposed by Texas Republican Lamar S. Smith, to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. In other words, SOPA would make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. The bill, if made into a law, would also allow rights holders to cut off the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means if a website has a tool that provides users to post information, such as YouTube.com or Tumblr.com, and the posted information exhibits copyright infringement, any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop, including search engines and advertising companies.
On Wednesday, January 18th, there was the largest online protest in history, when Google.com got over seven million people to sign petitions against the bill. Other websites such as Wikipedia.com and its British partner Reddit.com organized an Internet ‘black-out’ which cut off their services for a day and replaced them with a link to contact your local senator.
After a heated protest, Senator Smith decided to postpone endeavors to draft the bill. This was seen as a “win” for the Internet and the 7 million people that protested against one of what could have been the worst move on the government's part.
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