EDIT: Seems the House has finally decided to get opinions from cybersecurity experts and generally just experts. Pushed back to 2012. Good news, but it remains to be seen if the experts' opinions change anything.
Original post:
If you don't know what SOPA is, it's a little bill that seems like it's just about to pass. It gives companies unprecedented abilities to hunt down anything they think violates copyright laws on the internet, letting them shut down whole sights for any violation. Instantly. Basically, it's on par with censorship policies of China and Iran.
For example, post a funny image/meme from a movie/game/song on a forum? This could be considered copyright infringement, and the company will be within its right to shut the whole site down. Did you or anyone else post a little clip from a movie onto youtube? The owner of whatever the clip is from can shut down the whole site. And if you've used youtube, you're probably familiar with video's getting shut down because of copyright claims. Imagine that, but for the entire site.
What's even worse is that the people pushing this bill, have no idea how the internet works, and some have even admitting to not knowing what exactly SOPA does. No experts have been brought in, no real research done, nothing. They're just trying to push it through as hard and fast as they can, voting against any and all amendments to make the bill less vauge and ammendments that would prevent abuse by media companies, and passing ammendments that just make the thing even worse.
If you want to watch all this live, you can do so here. http://www.keepthewebopen.com/sopa
If you want a little "demo" of what the internet will be like under SOPA, read up on the whole seizure of Dajaz1.com [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/ice-admits-months-long-seizure-of-music-blog-was-a-mistake.ars].
This article [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111216/02382617103/sopa-markup-day-1-we-dont-understand-this-bill-it-might-do-terrible-things-dammit-were-passing-it-now.shtml] has a markup for the talks from yesterday. Kotaku also has a good primer [http://kotaku.com/5868545/the-stop-online-piracy-act-and-you-a-primer]. Here's [http://www.zoowithroy.com/2011/12/post-about-sopa-by-ryan.html] another good write-up.
And here's a little letter [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa] from the creators of the internet on SOPA.
So yeah, things look pretty bad. Not much we could do. If you live in the US, try calling your representative and urging him/her to vote against this. If you don't live in the US, try using this [http://americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition/index.html].
Oh, and here's [http://getyourcensoron.com/] a comic relevant to the situation.
It still needs Senate and President approval I believe, but the fact that it seems it's going to pass here [http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/2888] is very, very troubling.
Original post:
If you don't know what SOPA is, it's a little bill that seems like it's just about to pass. It gives companies unprecedented abilities to hunt down anything they think violates copyright laws on the internet, letting them shut down whole sights for any violation. Instantly. Basically, it's on par with censorship policies of China and Iran.
For example, post a funny image/meme from a movie/game/song on a forum? This could be considered copyright infringement, and the company will be within its right to shut the whole site down. Did you or anyone else post a little clip from a movie onto youtube? The owner of whatever the clip is from can shut down the whole site. And if you've used youtube, you're probably familiar with video's getting shut down because of copyright claims. Imagine that, but for the entire site.
What's even worse is that the people pushing this bill, have no idea how the internet works, and some have even admitting to not knowing what exactly SOPA does. No experts have been brought in, no real research done, nothing. They're just trying to push it through as hard and fast as they can, voting against any and all amendments to make the bill less vauge and ammendments that would prevent abuse by media companies, and passing ammendments that just make the thing even worse.
If you want to watch all this live, you can do so here. http://www.keepthewebopen.com/sopa
If you want a little "demo" of what the internet will be like under SOPA, read up on the whole seizure of Dajaz1.com [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/ice-admits-months-long-seizure-of-music-blog-was-a-mistake.ars].
This article [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111216/02382617103/sopa-markup-day-1-we-dont-understand-this-bill-it-might-do-terrible-things-dammit-were-passing-it-now.shtml] has a markup for the talks from yesterday. Kotaku also has a good primer [http://kotaku.com/5868545/the-stop-online-piracy-act-and-you-a-primer]. Here's [http://www.zoowithroy.com/2011/12/post-about-sopa-by-ryan.html] another good write-up.
And here's a little letter [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa] from the creators of the internet on SOPA.
So yeah, things look pretty bad. Not much we could do. If you live in the US, try calling your representative and urging him/her to vote against this. If you don't live in the US, try using this [http://americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition/index.html].
Oh, and here's [http://getyourcensoron.com/] a comic relevant to the situation.
It still needs Senate and President approval I believe, but the fact that it seems it's going to pass here [http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/2888] is very, very troubling.