La Pasiva

S.O.P.A.

What is SOPA? SOPA is an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act. It's a proposed bill that aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host orfacilitate the trading of pirated content.
SOPA's main targets are "rogue" overseas sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay, which are a trove for illegal downloads. Go to the The Pirate Bay, type in anycurrent hit movie or TV show like "Glee," and you'll see links to download full seasons and recent episodes for free.
Content creators have battled against piracy for years -- remember Napster? -- butit's hard for U.S. companies to take action against foreign sites. The Pirate Bay's servers are physically located in Sweden. So SOPA's goal is to cut off pirate sites' oxygen by requiring U.S. searchengines, advertising networks and other providers to withhold their services.
That means sites like Google wouldn't show flagged sites in their search results, and payment processors like eBay's(EBAY, Fortune 500) PayPal couldn't transmit funds to them.
Both sides say they agree that protecting content is a worthy goal. But opponents say that the way SOPA is written effectively promotescensorship and is rife with the potential for unintended consequences.
Silicon Valley woke up and took notice of the implications when SOPA was introduced in the House of Representatives in October. But itsvery similar counterpart, PIPA (the Protect IP Act), flew under the radar and was approved by a Senate committee in May. PIPA is now pending before the full Senate and scheduled for a vote on January24, though some senators are pushing for a delay.
Isn't copyright infringement already illegal? Yes. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act lays out enforcement measures.
Let's say a YouTube useruploads a copyrighted song. Under the current law, that song's copyright holders could send a "takedown notice" to YouTube. YouTube is protected against liability as long as it removes the content...