What Is SOPA And How It Would Affect You!
Since Rep. Lamar S. Smith introduced the SOPA bill which is also known as House Bill 3261 in US House of Representatives in October, world has witnessed controversy and outcry against it bill like none before. The representative, who introduced this bill in house, must have realized that it will be controversial but with recent developments on this matter, we can say that he must have failed to gauge the amount of controversy it would create accurately.
The introduction of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and its sister legislation PIPA (Protect IP Act) in house and senate respectively has provoked a fierce protest and outcry amongst the netizens over the last few months. Even websites like Wikipedia, Reddit were blacked out by their owners on Wednesday to protest against these laws whereas companies like Google and Facebook issued statements opposing the stand of these laws in house. All these websites also displayed a message stating “Tell Congress: Don’t censor the Web” on their respective homepages.
Wikipedia Blackout Against SOPA
The movie, TV and music industries will be the at the receivers end of this act as it will be lot easier for them to protect their original work from piracy and thus many companies from music, TV and movie industries have become top donors to Lamar’s campaign.
Here are some provisions in SOPA those would affect you if it is signed by US president:
- Currently US law enforcement agencies can shut down US based web sites directly; however they do not have any such right when matter comes to any foreign country based website. The provisions in SOPA will allow these agencies to block such websites on DNS level.
- Furthermore the law states that all US based companies will be forced not to provide any funding, advertisements, links or any other assistance to websites providing pirated content.
- In addition to this, Justice Dept. prosecutors will receive new powers using which they can prevent such websites providing pirated content from getting US funding and traffic.
- Preventing such website means govt. can seek search engines to ban such links or it could also seek orders from court asking credit card companies to stop processing payment to such sites.
- The important or most threatening provision in the bill is its broad each itself. Its language is so broad, that media companies seeking legal action against piracy could even sue social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter or Wikipedia which host such content unknowingly.
- Many organizations as well as white house itself is against the DNS blocking provision as it is the very same technique used by many hackers who try to redirect users illegally to other websites and thus it could have adverse effects on cyber security.
These are some provisions in SOPA bill which have created larger outcry than anyone in current US house has ever seen.
Read this too: Wikipedia remained shut on Wednesday to protest against SOPA
Protesters are claiming that US congress should spend money on finding solutions on piracy rather than wasting it on making laws as such laws can be played around using various techniques.
Google Opposes SOPA
We don’t know what will be the outcome, we don’t know who will come out as a winner but we certainly know that if such a bill gets cleared by houses, we won’t be able to surf freely on internet.
The recent news we have received regarding this matter is that many sponsors of SOPA are now abandoning the now-sinking ship as websites like Wikipedia have stood against it.
We are not US based and thus we cannot make or voice heard, but you can.
Make your voice heard by supporting online campaigns:
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Join Google’s campaign
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Go to Wikipedia’s campaign (Available for certain time only)
aavishkar Paranjape
Gadget freak, Apple lover; well that’s me! I have been in this wonderful field of freelance writing for quite some time and looking forward to develop more illuminating content related to gadgets or technology as I go along.
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