SOPA

Late last year- that is, October of 2011- a bill was introduced to Congress that would effectively eradicate online piracy and digital copyright infringement. The bill was known as SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and was designed to help copyright holders protect their properties by enabling them to seek legal action against any websites that are "facilitating copyright infringement." This means that websites that host unauthorized use of copyrighted materials would be liable to be sued and/or shut down by the owners of those copyrights. Unfortunately for many, this legislation would have directly affected websites such as Youtube and Imgur, which freely host videos and images uploaded by millions of users. Websites like these would have been liable for every single piece of copyrighted material uploaded by their users, meaning that, when this bill passed, Youtube could have been immediately sued for its hosting of this adorable clip from UP. As a result of SOPA, media-hosting websites like Youtube and Imgur would thus have to have started censoring user-uploaded content and limiting the ability of their users to freely share and access the media on their sites. This is still not as bad, though, as the effect this bill would have on social networking websites. Places like Facebook and Twitter would no longer be free spaces for sharing information and media, as if any one of their hundreds of millions of users chose to share a single piece of copyrighted material, they could be shut down. A good analogy I heard for the affect of this bill is that if a customer at a bank chose to store something he/she had stolen from someone else inside a safe deposit box at the bank, the bank could be sued or shut down by the owner of the stolen material. Clearly, the bank in this situation should not be at fault for this, nor should it be considered to be enabling theft. It just seems ridiculous to me, and the result would be that Facebook and Twitter would have to start strictly censoring the content uploaded by its users or be prepared to face legal action for it. Of course, for these websites, that would severely affect their ability to serve their only purpose, which is to allow people to freely share information. In this sense, SOPA could have rendered Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and essentially every other social networking website defunct.

At this point, you may be thinking "Boy, this sound terrible! I'm sure glad this bill never made it past congress!" Or you may not be thinking that. Assuming, though, that you're thinking that, I've got quite a surprise for you. The bill is still up for a vote, and the topic is still being debated hotly in congress. In fact, frighteningly enough, there is a significant chance that this bill could be passed when the house judiciary committee reconvenes to discuss it later this month. Fortunately, legions of online rights activists and web afficionados have come together to lobby against the bill, creating various online petitions (including an official whitehouse.gov petition which managed to garner the site's required 25,000 signatures in a matter of two days) and generally making it abundantly clear that a large number of people are not happy about SOPA. As you can probably already tell, I believe that this bill has clear, negative affects on our first amendment rights and I am all for quashing this thing as soon as possible. I'd love to hear what you think, though. Does this bill go too far, or is it important in the fight against online piracy? Feel free to leave a comment below.