SOPA - What do you think?

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Stop Online Piracy Act

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Stop Online Piracy Act
Great Seal of the United States.
Full title "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes." —H.R. 3261[1]
Acronym SOPA
Citations
Codification
Legislative history
  • Introduced in the House as HR 3261 by Lamar Smith(R-TX) on October 26, 2011
  • Committee consideration by: House Judiciary Committee
Major amendments
None
Relevant Supreme Court cases
None

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.[2] Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the Protect IP Act.[3]

The bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the infringing website; barring search engines from linking to such sites and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a felony. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.[4]

Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market, including the resultant revenue and jobs, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws especially against foreign websites.[5] Opponents say it is Internet censorship,[6] that it will cripple the Internet,[7]and will threaten whistleblowing and other free speech.[8]

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on SOPA on November 16, 2011.[9] A House aide said the Committee chairman is scheduling the bill for markup on December 15, and that he is still in discussions and is "open for changes" to the bill.[10]

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Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on December 13, 2011 at 10:25am

Email from Mozilla that my aunt forwarded to me: 

------- Original Message --------

Subject: Next up in the SOPA fight
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:22:08 +0000
From: Ben Simon, Mozilla.org <joinmozilla@mozilla.org>
Reply-To: joinmozilla@mozilla.org



This week is shaping up to be a big one for the future of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The House Judiciary Committee -- which has jurisdiction over the bill, and the greatest power to stop or change it -- has scheduled the legislation for what's called "markup" this Thursday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

Markup provides the opportunity for legislators to make edits to the bill to make it less harmful to the internet we know and love, and to weaken support for it overall.

Opponents of SOPA from every industry, ideology, and background across the Web are teaming up this week for a show of opposition, flooding Congress with calls againstSOPA and censoring our own content to demonstrate how widely SOPA could reach if enacted.

Can you make a call today? Get started here at AmericanCensorship.org.

Mozilla has already made its voice heard in this fight -- thanks to you.

Two weeks ago, there was strong concern that the Senate would try and move the Protect IP Act -- companion legislation to SOPA in the Senate -- before the new year. But thousands of Mozillians -- and many others from around the Web -- raised their voices. And now, while the legislation is not stopped, we can rest assured it won't pass this year.

I hope you'll raise your voice again today -- get started here atAmericanCensorship.org, a coalition resource put together for this campaign:

https://donate.mozilla.org/American-Censorship

Thanks so much,

Ben

P.S. -- Not in the US? Just pick a blog post or some social media to censor to help get the word out:

https://donate.mozilla.org/Censor-Posts

-- 

Ben Simon
Join Mozilla Lead
Mozilla Foundation
Permalink Reply by Zoetrope on December 13, 2011 at 11:07am

I been signing every petition thrown my away, and I'm going to call right now.  Thanks for posting this.  This is a really urgent issue.  

Permalink Reply by Zoetrope on December 13, 2011 at 6:45pm

from reddit (a beacon of truth and objectivity (( and cat pics)) on the internet):

SOPA in a nutshell: If a criminal hid counterfeit goods in a bank s...

from wikipedia:

“ The Protect IP Act says that an "information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order". In addition, it must delete all hyperlinks to the offending "Internet site".[14] ”

The bill has been criticized by Abigail Phillips of Electronic Frontier Foundation for not being specific about what constitutes an infringing web site. For example, if WikiLeaks were accused of distributing copyrighted content, U.S. search engines could be served a court order to block search results pointing to Wikileaks. Requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website altogether due to an infringing page would raise free speech concerns regarding lawful content hosted elsewhere on the site.[25]

Google chairman Eric Schmidt has stated that the measures called for in the PROTECT IP Act are overly simple solutions to a complex problem, and that the precedent set by pruning DNS entries is bad from the viewpoint of free speech and would be a step toward less permissive Internet environments, such as China's. As chairman of the company that owns the world's largest search engine, Schmidt has declared "if there is a law that requires DNSs to do X and it's passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it."

"If we need to amend the DMCA, let's do it with a negotiation between the interested parties, not with a bill written by the content industry's lobbyists and jammed through Congress on a fast track," urged venture capitalist and Business Insider columnist Fred Wilson in an October 29th editorial on the changes that the current House and Senate versions of the proposed legislation would make to the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. "Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and startups like Dropbox, Kickstarter, and Twilio are the leading exporters and job creators of this time. They are the golden goose of the economy and we cannot kill the golden goose to protect industries in decline," he said. [55]

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on December 14, 2011 at 2:04am

I'm going to be taking the year off from watching movies for a year.

Vote with your dollars.  Don't go to the movies in 2012!

The MPAA (and the RIAA for that matter) should be prosecuted under the RICO act. 

Permalink Reply by Zoetrope on December 14, 2011 at 8:20am

Tomorrow is the day.  Would be a shame to see this thing pass without much resistance from the public.  

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