What Is SOPA?

SOPA is what?If you had not heard of SOPA before, you probably have right now: Some of the most influential Internet sites-Reddit and Wikipedia are among them dark, to protest the much-maligned anti-piracy law. But apart from that a very bad thing, what is SOPA? And what it will mean for you when it happened?SOPA is an anti-piracy law working its way through Congress ...House Judiciary Committee chairman and Texas Republican Lamar Smith, along with 12 co-sponsors, the Stop Online Piracy Act introduced on 26 October last year.Debate on HR 3261, as it is officially known, has a hearing on 16th November and a "mark-up" period on 15 December, which designed the bill even more enjoyable for both parties was passed. His counterpart in the Senate of the Protect IP Act (S. 968) is. PIPA: Also known by its cuter-but-still-deadly name. It will probably be a vote next Wednesday on PIPA, SOPA discussions were put on hold, but will resume in February this year.
... This would allow content creators to extraordinary power over the Internet ...The beating heart of the SOPA is the ability of the owner of intellectual property rights (read: movie studios and record companies) to effectively pull the plug on another site, against which they have a copyright claim. When Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, was the studio demanding that Google page to remove from its search results that PayPal no longer accept payments made to or from this site that ad services benefit from all the ads and finances, and most dangerously, that prevent people from ISP website, go there ourselves.
... What would be comedically almost unnoticed ...Maybe the eating because SOPA in its original construction, that IP owners can take these actions without a single court appearance or legal sign-off. All that was necessary to use a single letter of "good faith" that the target site has been infringed on its contents. Once PayPal or Google or whoever will notice the quarantine, they hold five days to either or contest the court action. Owners still have the power to block this kind of request, but has softened in the latest version of the Law of the 5 day window, and the company would now need the permission of the court.
The language in SOPA implies that it is squarely aimed at foreign offenders, which is why it is on the cutting off of funding sources and transport (usually U.S.) as a direct attack on a targeted site (outside the U.S. jurisdiction) focuses directly. But this is only part of it.
... Up to that point may be the creation of an "Internet blacklist" ...Here is the other thing: Payment processors or content providers such as Visa or YouTube do not even need a letter off of a website resource. The bill is "militia" provision gives broad immunity against a provider of proactive web sites violate the shutters in their view of copyright. What does the MPAA have only a list of infringing sites to these websites from the Internet to get blacklisted to make public.
Potential for abuse is widespread. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon themselves to each viral video site on the Internet with a "good faith" that they be delisted hosting copyrighted material. Abandoned YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (ISP) owns NBC (content provider). Think they might have an interest in the shuttering some rivals domains? Under SOPA, they can do it even without asking for permission.
... While demanding a huge cost advantage of almost any place you daily ...SOPA also a "circumvention" clause, which tell the people about how SOPA work is almost as bad as to keep its key provisions. In other words, if you set your status to update links to The Pirate Bay, Facebook would be legally obliged to remove it.Ditto Tweets, YouTube, Tumblr, or WordPress posts or pages to be indexed by Google. And when are Google, Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, etc., can? You are a government, "the injunction." And they could be shut down.
The resources that they would take themselves to the police, are monumental for established businesses, and reach for start-ups. SOPA would censor any online social outlet, have and prevent new ones from emerging.
... And may disappear your entire digital life ...The party line on SOPA is that it only affects off-shore shady torrent sites. This is wrong. As the great legal brain at bricoleur have indicated the potential collateral damage is huge. And it's you. For while Facebook and Twitter have the financial means to defend against the pass down information, the smaller sites that you use to store your photos, videos and your thoughts can not be disconnected. If the government decides against a portion of this site copyright and proves it in court?Phew. Your digital life is gone, and you can not get it back.
... And still manage to be both unnecessary and ineffective ...What is saddest about SOPA is that it is futile on two fronts. In the U.S., the MPAA, RIAA, and have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand (DMCA), that infringing material will be removed. We have all seen enough "video removed" messages, to know that it works quite well.
What the foreign operator, you might as well be throwing darts in a tsetse fly. The flagship abroad torrenting, Pirate Bay, has it perfectly clear that they are not in the least afraid. And why should it be? His owners have successfully completed a technological attempt to shut down so far evaded them. His promotional partners are not American, so they are not stifled. But more important than Pirate Bay itself is the idea of ​​the Pirate Bay, and the hundreds or thousands of sites like it, as tough as the most populous and mushrooms in a swamp. Forget the question should SOPA to be successful. It is incredibly unlikely that he could. At the very least, to achieve their stated goals.
... But past is a frighteningly good chance ...SOPA is, objectively, a trainwreck of an unworkable bill, one that deliberately ignores the nature of the Internet and suggests major financial and cultural losses.The White House has come out strongly against him. As hundreds of venture capitalists and dozens of men and women who build the Internet primarily contributed. Despite all of these companies have already spent a lot of money pushing SOPA, and it remains popular in the House of Representatives.
The mark-up period on 15 December, the one that supposedly transform the bill into something more manageable? Useless. Twenty reason changes were driven flat-out rejected. And while the bill at the most controversial provision compelling DNS filtering was fortunately taken off the table recently in practice, ISPs would almost certainly have closed with DNA as a tool to a defendant on the ground.
... If we do not mind.The dynamics of the anti-SOPA movement has been slow to build, but we are finally at a saturation. Wikipedia, boing boing, WordPress, TwitPic: they will all be on 18January dark. An anti-SOPA rally planned for tomorrow afternoon in New York. The list of companies supporting SOPA is long, but shrink, thanks in no small part to the e-mails and phone calls they received in recent months.
So keep calling. Keep an e-mail. Above all, keep making it known that the Internet is on the same principles of freedom that this country was built. It should be granted the same rights.