SOPA & PIPA: Explained in four paragraphs

Author’s note: Is there any topic that you would like to see covered in four paragraphs? Leave it in the comments below and maybe I’ll cover it in a later blog.

Update: Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, said on Friday that he is pulling the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution.” Victory!

On Jan 18, many of our favourite sites such as Wikipedia, StumbleUpon, and Reddit “blacked out” in protest of SOPA and PIPA, but what are these bills, exactly? Well, here’s a four paragraph explanation. In late October, one of the representatives from the United States House of Representatives introduced H.R 3261, better known as Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The goal of this bill and its sponsors is to stop copyright infringement (is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder’s exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work), online piracy, and rogue websites selling medication that is altered or misbranded (or without a prescription). The bill would achieve this through a variety of actions. First, it would give the attorney general the ability to seek orders against “US-directed foreign Internet sites” who are committing or facilitating online piracy. These court orders would require the owner or operator of said sites to cease and desist any activities that constitute copyright infringement, recordings of musical performances or exhibited motion pictures, or counterfeit labels/goods/services. Additionally, the bill requires online service providers, search engines, payment providers such as Paypal, and advertising services to carry out “preventative measures” against these sites upon receiving a copy of the Attorney General requested court order. These websites would be required to withhold their services or block users located in the United States from accessing the infringing site. At the same time, SOPA would offer immunity from liability for these search engines, payment providers, etc if they voluntarily block access to such sites. Thus creating a two-tier system.

If that’s not enough, then this bill is going to expand criminal copyright infringement offenses and also penalties for intellectual property offenses. What it means for the internet as we know it? It blocks ideas, information, conversations and people. The internet would become diminished for all of us. The bill seems to be aimed at piracy websites and the weird websites trying to sell you weird pills, it could have a far reaching and lasting negative impact on the internet as a whole. All web-related business would definitely suffer, along with social media outlets and users who upload copyrighted content could be subjected to even harsher criminal punishment than they are now. Free and open source software projects would be shut down. Furthermore, technology experts have expressed worry that this bill could potentially harm the infrastructure of the Internet itself. Internet security and privacy would be compromised. Supporters of this bill claim that the legislation will protect content creators and intellectual property, but at what cost? This bill is widely viewed as the first step towards online censorship by the US government.

If SOPA was not bad enough, there is also the Protect IP Act (PIPA) which is, simply put, the Senate’s version of SOPA.  There isn’t much of a difference, except that PIPA is currently being considered in the Senate (upper house of legislature) and SOPA is in the House of Representatives (lower house). A bill must be passed by both of the houses before it is sent to the President to be made into law. Normally, one bill is written by one chamber of legislature (House or Senate), then passed by that chamber, then sent to the other chamber to be passed as well. However, in this case, what we have here are two independently written pieces of legislation that are more or less the same thing. So what happens in this case is that each chamber must pass its own version of the bill first, and then both bills are sent to what’s called a Conference Committee where two versions are merged into one piece of legislation. That bill then has to go back to both chambers to be passed again. So once both chambers of legislature agree on the wording of the bill and then pass it, it’s given to the president to be made into law. PIPA also wants to remove foreign sites from the internet so that Americans can’t get there; that means there will be some kind of country-wide internet firewall.

First off, we must ask ourselves: are we willing to begin going down that road? Are we willing to live in a world without sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, Ebay or YouTube? Do we want to lived in a world that takes steps backwards in the realms of free and flowing information, or will this managed to be stopped and we will continue to move forward? At the end of the day, as Canadians we’re not free from the effects that this bill will have if passed. First off, in the eyes of the U.S law, websites with domain names ending in .com (such as youthareawesome.com), .net and .org are treated as American domestic domain names, regardless of where the owner is based. Secondly, millions of Canadians rely on the legitimate sites that are affected by the bill. Whether creating a Wikipedia entry, posting a comment on Reddit, or running a WordPress blog, any site that is part of the internet is a direct target of SOPA. If Canadians remain silent, they many end up finding sites and services that they rely upon being silenced. That in mind, many political speculators in Canada are saying that if this gets passed in the United States we’ll see it also see a similar version being passed in Canada. How can you help stop this from being passed? Spread word about SOPA to everyone you know. Use sites like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness! Get in touch with organizations, web sites and people who are opposing and working to combat this dangerous legislation. If you even spread this blog post, you’re already spreading knowledge and awareness about this dangerous legislation. Stay vigilant about protecting a truly free internet, because otherwise the internet will be a worse off place for everyone.