Wednesday, January 18, 2012

What is SOPA?

If you don't know what SOPA is, I have some info for you

SOPA is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress...


House Judiciary Committee Chair and Texas Republican Lamar Smith, along with 12 co-sponsors, introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act on October 26th of last year. Debate on H.R. 3261, as it's formally known, has consisted of one hearing on November 16th and a "mark-up period" on December 15th, which was designed to make the bill more agreeable to both parties. Its counterpart in the Senate is the Protect IP Act (S. 968). Also known by its cuter-but-still-deadly name: PIPA. There will likely be a vote on PIPA next Wednesday; SOPA discussions had been placed on hold but will resume in February of this year.
...that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet...


The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites against whom they have a copyright claim. If Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could 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—most dangerously—that the site's ISP prevent people from even going there.

Perhaps the most galling thing about SOPA in its original construction is that it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. All it required was a single letter claiming a "good faith belief" that the target site has infringed on its content. Once Google or PayPal or whoever received the quarantine notice, they would have five days to either abide or to challenge the claim in court. Rights holders still have the power to request that kind of blockade, but in the most recent version of the bill the five day window has softened, and companies now would need the court's permission.

The language in SOPA implies that it's aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that's why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction) directly. But that's just part of it.
There is more on SOPA here

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Republicans are trying to hide something.

Stan said...

I don't like it. It smells fishy to me.

BosGuy said...

I had a similar post today too.

I'm so happy to see you and other bloggers also showing their support and raising awareness.

I contacted my representatives today and I hope that others did too.

Jezza said...

Thanks for this. Leave the country for 2 weeks and there's whole new vocabulary of acronyms to learn

Ron said...

Just a backdoor way for the movie studios and record companies to eventually charge for all content on the Internet. Don't be fooled by the "anti-piracy" wording. The movie and music industry moguls have bought and paid for lawmakers to pass THEIR bill. This isn't good for the consumer, it's all about them.

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.