SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act or Steal Or Privacy Away?
Ok, so you’re probably asking the very same question I asked the very first time I saw the acronym and then what the acronym means. What the hell is SOPA? Well here’s the deal, SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. You ca read more about it here.
For those who would rather not have to read too much about SOPA, its basically a law that allows the US Government to take down any website and seize your domain name if it is presumed that you may be involved in any form of piracy. What’s worst is that you can also be imprisoned if convicted. This means that should you manage a website that has links to pirated songs, software, or documents, then you my friend are a potential target of SOPA.
Now you would think that the fact that SOPA is intended to reduce piracy, that all the big name developers and producers of such content would be backing the US Government in an effort to get us all to start buying every single song, software or document produced, but that’s not the case. Companies such as AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo! and a few others are totally against this bill. In fact they all co-wrote a letter to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, saying SOPA poses “a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation’s cybersecurity.” So what does that tell you? SOPA is bad, very bad. One company, BusinessInsuranceQuotes, has put together a little infographic (below) showing what SOPA means for businesses and innovations. It doesn’t show how damning SOPA can be, but at least it will give you an idea of SOPA and its intentions.
Behind The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
So now that you know that SOPA exists and what its intentions are, what are your views on this bill? Leave a comment and lets get the discussion going.
