SOPA controversy temporarily quelled after bill postponement

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SOPA controversy temporarily quelled after bill postponement
1/19/2012 5:23:45 PM
Category: History of Business

The most popular acronym of 2012 is SOPA, and it may have had far-reaching implications on internet viewership before the movement was temporarily put on hold.

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a proposed bill that aims to police copyright infringement and restrict access to websites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content. For now, however, further action on the bill has been postponed after protests and internet blackouts forced some lawmakers to rethink the measure.

The bill, introduced in the House of Representatives in October, would flag and eventually block access to overseas websites that pirate movies, music and other online materials from the United States. This could be a hefty number of sites, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which estimates that 17.5 percent of all bandwidth in the U.S. is used by illegal downloads.

SOPA defines a law-breaking site as a "foreign infringing site" that is "committing or infringing" on a copyright. The vagueness of the language has many large U.S. sites - such as Google and YouTube - worried they may be targeted for unknowingly hosting pirated material, such as the millions of user-generated videos that YouTube can't possibly monitor.

"YouTube would just go dark immediately," Google public policy director Bob Boorstin said at a conference last month, as quoted by CNN Money. "It couldn't function."

In addition, the rules may hinder payment processors such as eBay and PayPal, which would no longer be able to transfer funds to these sites for paid services.

If passed, overseas sites - such as Swedish-based The Pirate Bay, a main source for illegal torrent downloads of TV shows and movies - would no longer be visible on U.S. search engines or ads, essentially "cut(ting) off pirate sites' oxygen," the news source notes.

Predictably, the bill had its fair share of opponents.

For instance, the anti-SOPA trade group NetCoalition stated, "The legislation systematically favors a copyright owner's intellectual property rights and strips the owners of accused websites of their rights," according to the news source.

Wikipedia performed a 24-hour blackout of its site in protest on Wednesday, requesting that viewers contact politicians to modify or squash the bill. It appears that the movement worked.

"More than 162 million people saw our message asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge," the site wrote.

Facebook joined the brigade against censorship as well, as creator Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his site that "Facebook opposes SOPA ... and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet."

On the flip side, many of SOPA's supporters are media companies, such as Time Warner and the Motion Picture Association of America. They claim online piracy leads to U.S. job losses as it deprives content creators of necessary income, and say the legislation is "meant to revamp a broken system that doesn't adequately prevent criminal behavior," CNN says.

The "broken system" refers to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protected against U.S. infringement but is seen as "useless" against overseas sites.

Alternative legislation has been proposed by a bipartisan group of House members in an attempt to find middle ground. The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) would provide more protection than SOPA for sites accused of hosting pirated content.

According to Multichannel News, the bill would grant the International Trade Commission rights to investigate digital content imported from foreign websites, handle disputes and levy sanctions. Republican representative Darrell Issa co-signed the bill, stating that it "delivers stronger intellectual property rights for American artists and innovators while protecting the open, accessible internet Americans deserve."

As far as SOPA's current standing - it will likely be reworked in some way to give it a better chance at passing, says CNN Money.

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