PIPA / SOPA: Potentially Dangerous Legislation

I woke up this morning to Nirvana’s song, "Smells like Teen Spirit." I felt inspired to research information about the song on the internet, so I opened my laptop and navigated to Wikipedia. I typed the word “Nirvana” into the search bar. As soon as I hit the enter key, the page content turned black and I was left with nothing but a brief, yet stern message prompting me to write my congressman about stopping legislation that could potentially destroy the internet as we know it.

If you haven’t seen the many website blackouts or protests occurring over the past few days, you may be wondering what legislation is threatening to censor the internet. There are two bills at the cause of all this commotion, SOPA and PIPA. Keep reading to find out how these bills would change privacy on the Internet!

What These Bills Are:

PIPA is the first of the two anti-piracy bills. Its acronym stands for the Protect IP Act. This bill was introduced to the Senate in May of 2011. If PIPA is passed, it will give U.S. corporations, mainly the entertainment, gaming, and software industries and the Federal Government the right to seek legal action with any website they feel is enabling copyright infringement. If this bill is passed, it will:

• Force U.S. internet providers to block access to websites deemed as enablers of copyright infringement
• Seek legal action by suing search engines, blog sites, directories, or any site in general to have the black listed sites removed from their website
• Will be able to force advertising agencies to remove websites from advertising accounts
• Companies will also have the power to sue any new websites that get started after these bills are passed, if they believe that they are not doing a good job of preventing infringement

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and is a bill that was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives in October of 2011. If SOPA is passed, it will work in conjunction with PIPA. Here are some highlights:

· The U.S. Attorney General will be able to force search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, servers, and payment processors from having any contact with alleged infringing websites

·SOPA will allow private corporations to create their own personal hit lists composed of websites they feel are breaking their copyright policies. These companies will be able to cut off all payments to the targeted website. The website of question will have five days to act before it is permanently taken down

How This Affects Internet Users:

Blogs can be blocked or shut down completely and the internet will become a witch-hunt for any possible copyright violation. These acts make it the blog owner’s responsibility for everything displayed on their site, including comments of visitors.

These acts are already stopping developers and start-up companies from innovating due to the bills causing a riskier legal climate. If these acts were around when the internet was first created, many websites we use today like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or SoundCloud would not exist. Basically any website that could be targeted as a place where online piracy might take place would not exist.

It is well known that the government has been under a lot of pressure to resolve the issues wrapped up in online piracy, and piracy has been a growing problem over the past ten years. But, this legislation has a high margin of error, mainly because it has been rushed. Google and Mozilla, two former supporters of the bill, have removed their sponsorship and are working hard to make sure the acts do not get passed.

One noted flaw involves lessened overall security for internet users. Also, it would cost the country $47 billion a year to uphold these bills, and sadly, they will not succeed in stopping piracy. That’s right. Instead of taking down piracy, the acts will take away freedom of speech, and forms of individualism. The illegal downloading of pirated content will still thrive. Posting a video of yourself singing a copyrighted song will get you sued, but illegally downloading that song by entering a websites IP address in lieu of its name, will still go unpunished.

These bills have sent a shock-wave through the nation. The best we can all do is stay informed. Check out this video describing some of the possible consequences of passing these bills. On that page, there is also information on how to vote against the acts.

Do you think these bills will censor internet users and stunt online innovation? Share your comments and feedback below.