Why You Should Worry about SOPA, PIPA

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 18 January 2012, 00:08 IST   |    1 Comments
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SOPA and Censorship

Bangalore: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) have been making ripples in the US, with a number of websites, such as Scribd, Red 5 Studios and Wikipedia blacking out on Wednesday, January 18, to voice their rebellion against the bills, as they will kill the essence of  resources available presently on the Internet.  

 “If any single streamer plays copyrighted music (or alt tabs into a movie or other owned content) on their stream, there is a significant risk of the entire streaming service being taken down. In some cases, it could even result in criminal penalties for the streamer.” said Riot Games’ CEO Brandon Beck in the League of Legends (LOL) forum. Gaming companies oppose the bills as it would be highly impossible to monitor gamers’ actions when they are online on their service, playing games.

The much opposed acts actually aim to protect resources from distribution without the original sources’ consent. The Verge reported that the way these bills propose to do so, however is by ordering search engines (like Google) to tweak search results so that foreign websites that host pirated content are not listed; not allowing payment providers (such as PayPal) to continue hosting the payment accounts of foreign websites that had illegally copied content and vice-versa (i.e. not allowing ad services to accept payment or requests for ads from sites that hosted said content); as well as by ordering Internet service providers to modify their DNS servers so they don’t show the domain names of foreign websites that have illegally copied content (including songs, videos, and photos).

This means that sites like YouTube could be taken off the web just because subscribers have unauthorized content such as songs or videos on their channels. If an internet user puts up a picture from another source on a blog, the blog in itself would cease to exist to readers in the US.

Twitter is one of the major companies that didn’t join Wikipedia and other sites that will be blacking out. Dick Costolo, a member of Twitter’s board, said “Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.”  However, he clarified later saying that he was only talking about Twitter, and not other websites.

Twitter, in fact, along with other internet and technology companies such as Google, Facebook, AOL, eBay, and Yahoo!, sent a letter to the US government last year stating that they support the bills’ goals. The bills, however, would also open up American internet and Technology websites to “uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates” that would pose a serious threat to the said companies’ growth, as well as cyber security, they said.

The White House responded to such petitions (in its blog) saying “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cyber security risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

The White House’s stance on the subject, along with the fate of the bills and the Internet, are for the future to reveal.