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Once again the many can thank the few for having potential freedoms taken away and/or restricted.  In this case, I’m thinking about movie piracy, but this is not limited to just that one industry.

(This is a quickie article, shot from the hip, talking about the major outline points I’ve noticed about this SOPA bill.  It’s not intended to be the end-all of anything, except my venting a little bit about movie piracy and the cavalier attitude digital pirates carry with them. I’ve provided source links at the bottom of this rant if you want further information from different sources.)

The SOPA bill is the Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as H.R.3261. (Which is getting voted for on December 21st, 2011.)

This bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 and it basically looks to expand the long arm of the U.S. law and copyright holders in their abilities to fight the online trafficking and theft of copyrighted property, or copyright infringement.

SOPA would allow the U.S. Department of Justice and  copyright holders the ability to get court orders against websites involved or, more accurately, accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.

I don’t have any issues with the spirit of this new bill.  But there seems to be a lot of freedoms granted in the exercising of the protection of the copyrighted materials…

For instance, the potential ramifications from a website that is discovered to be facilitating copyright infringement (knowingly or not) can include

• Barring advertising networks from doing business with infringing websites;
• Barring search engines from linking to suspected sites:
• Requiring ISPs to block access to suspected infringing sites.

This bill also makes unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material a felony.

And the peer-pressure aspect of this bill will give immunity to ISPs that voluntarily take action against suspected websites that seem dedicated to copyright infringement.

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