What is SOPA (No solamente "soup" en Espanol)? How would it effect YOU?
Well, most Americans now Google or head straight to Wikipedia for the answers to the universe, and the following is what they have to say.
Wikipedia
Other explanations and POVs.
CNN/Money
Washington Post
Questions to answer:
1. Why was SOPA proposed?
2. Who are the main supporters?
3. What are the main provisions (parts) of the bill?
4. Why are companies like Wikipedia and Google so opposed to SOPA?
5. What does this debate reveal about competing interests and the power of competing interest groups?
6. What other questions do you have? How might you find answers?
RESPONSE FOR WEDNESDAY: (How) should the government the government battle online piracy and the misuse of copyrighted material?
30 comments:
SOPA is a short form that stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. This is a bill that was proposed that is supposed to clear out the copyrighting on websites. This will restrict access to sites that host the trading of pirated content. Some websites were closed down for that day such as Reddit and Wikipedia. Many people began rallies in places like New York because they disagreed with this bill. Millions of Americans were against this because this bill would censor the Internet and soon slow the economic growth within the US. There were not too many supporters. Some congressmen that agreed to it previously dropped down because it got to out of hand and they didn’t really believe in it. There were also links on some web pages to email your congressman or women but the mailboxes were too full already by noon time. I believe it is up to the actual website to report or punish for copyrighting. What does the government know about this, they just want to control everything we do as Americans?
SOPA was proposed as a bill in-order to stop illegal online piracy of movies, music, and copyrighted items. The main supporters of the SOPA bill are the movie industry, the music industry, and anyone who has lost copyrighted material due to illegal online piracy. This bill gives permission to the government to shut down any website that trades or exchanges illegal pirated material that is copyrighted. Wikipedia and Google are some of the companies that are opposed to SOPA because it will limit the amount of information they can provided to people on their website. For example if you search something on google and a pirated link comes up than google would be liable. The debate against SOPA is strong americans like their free music and pirated videos, and they enjoy using google and wikipedia as an everyday resource to information. So in my opinion this bill would never pass. Also the government would be getting themselves into something that they know nothing about and would cost them millions of dollars to enforce.
SOPA was proposed as a bill in order to stop illegal piracy of movies, music, and copyrighted items to be put online. The main supporters of the SOPA bill are the movie and music industries because they lost copyrighted material due to illegal online piracy. This bill gives permission to the government to shut down any website that trades or exchanges illegal pirated material. Wikipedia and Google are opposed to SOPA because it will limit the amount of information they can provided on their website. The debate against SOPA is Americans enjoy using Google and Wikipedia as an everyday resource to information and if SOPA was passed, websites like Google and Wikipedia wouldn’t have as many sources available to be used. the actual website should be allowed to report or punish for copyrighting.
SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill currently being debated in Congress that, if enacted, could allow the government to restrict the posting of copyrighted materials online and punish the host websites for presence of pirated property. This bill is supported by media companies who own rights to copyrighted materials because they want Americans to go out and buy their songs, or movies or ideas from them rather than streaming or downloading them for free online. These companies argument is that internet domains like Wikipedia and Youtube essentially allow for the theft of their intellectual property. Web-users across the internet have strongly opposed this bill, however, and many have taken action to stop its process through Congress. The Wikipedia 24-hour blackout, Google black bar protest, and flood of emails and letters to representatives from worried internet lovers have started to make an impact on the bill’s success in Congress and slowed down the bill’s momentum considerably. Opponents of SOPA say that it interferes with the first amendment right to free speech and innovation and that it is unfair to punish the domains for every violation by individuals on their sites. I agree with the opponents of this bill and think that it is not the government’s place to be getting involved in the public affairs of the internet, which is considered a public forum. We’ve seen how powerful the influence of the internet can be, even just small-scale, with the Wikipedia black-out and with power outages in our town. The internet is such an important part of our lives today it’s almost impossible to imagine a time when it did not exist. We need to protect the freedom of the internet by not allowing it to be censored. It is not the government’s job to regulate the internet or online piracy even if it is illegal. It should be up to individual internet domains to ward off piracy on their own site as best they can, but in the end it is not up to any higher authority to administer control over the internet. Online piracy is an issue, but at the moment I do not see any immediate resolution other than letting websites handle the problem on their own.
SOPA is a bill whose name explains why it was proposed, Stop Online Piracy Act. this bill would attempt to stop Internet piracy and would do so by restricting access to sites that host or facilitate the trade of stolen content. The main supporters of the bill would be the media companies because they feel that their being deprived of their income. The opposers consist of tech companies who appreciate the way the Internet works and online trade. Also, the senate already approved another under the radar bill similar to SOPA , PIPA, which was supposed to be voted on until the word got out. The main parts of SOPA are to make in harder for American users to access sites that violate copyright and keep U.S. companies from providing them to keep overseas “pirates” from continuing on. Also, it requires every payment or advertising network to set up a process so outside parties could notify the company that one of its consumers is dedicated to theft. But, the main reason that aroused protest from Sites like Google and Wikipedia was requiring U.S. search engines, advertising networks, and other providers to withhold their services and not show flagged sites. There were parts in the bill that promoted censorship and forced sites to more closely look review content in fear of violating the new rules. I believe the government should not battle online piracy and the misuse of copyright means and rather leave it to the individual websites to choose if they want to punish the copyright violators or sweep in under the rug. I think in no mean is censorship acceptable. Judging by the provisions of the bill and the way many have reacted in ways like shutting down sites or sending links to email your congressperson, all the way to more active roles like protesting, shows how opposed the majority of people are. I think what angers us all more is the fact that it was so hidden from the public making it seem more suspicious of negative effects.
SOPA was proposed to help fight online trafficking and fight online piracy. The proponents of SOPA say that it is necessary for stricter copyright laws. The Republican representative for Texas, Lamar S. Smith, proposed SOPA in the House of Representatives. He originally had 12 bipartisan sponsors, although that support eventually evaporated. SOPA's sister bill, PIPA was proposed in the Senate by Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, with 11 bipartisan sponsors. Besides the representatives that proposed and supported this bill, the entertainment industry is a large push behind this bill, as well as copyright and trademark holders. The largest component of the bill, the one that has all of its opponents up in arms, states that the government has free reign to shut down the websites that they believe violate this bill. Tech companies like Google and Wikipedia oppose SOPA and PIPA because they say they will be "job-killers" while hurting innovation and economic growth. This debate reveals how much power the tech companies wield, which is especially surprising considering how recently they came onto the scene.
I believe that the government should handle the issue of copyrighted material and online piracy sensibly, and not with SOPA and PIPA. These bills reach way too far, and there are way too many loopholes for congressmen to abuse and use to their advantage. I believe that the OPEN bill that was proposed on January 18 might be a better solution to this problem. Although it's not a complete solution, it's certainly sounds better than SOPA or PIPA.
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act which is a bill in congress to stop copyrighting by shutting down sites that have pirated information. The main goal is to target oversea sites like The Pirate Bay which have pirated TV shows and movies. It's difficult for US companies to take action against foreign sites so SOPA will require US search engines to withhold their services. SOPA is supported by the Movie industry and Record companies who say that they are losing money and putting people out of jobs due to pirated material. The bill says if copyrighted material is put on a website the network will get a notice and have five days to cut off service to the target site. SOPA would expand on the existing criminal laws on copyrighted material and add a penalty of five years in prison. The date the bill was supposed to be voted on was pushed back because of protests. On January 18 Wikipedia, Reddit and 7,000 smaller websites coordinated a blackout or posted links/images in protest against SOPA. There were protests in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. Wikipedia had a link to email your congressman about what you think about SOPA and this made bill loose some of its Congressional supporters. This bill was expected to move quickly through committee approval in the House but is now tabled due to protests. In my opinion there will have to be a lot of work done to the bill if it will even be considered to get passed.
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. This act mainly is to stop copyrighting websites. Whether it is illegal online piracy of movies, music, copyrighted work, etc. The main supporters of SOPA are the movie industries, the music industries, and websites that have had material copyrighted because of illegal online piracy. The bill lets the government shut down websites. To test this act some websites we shut down for a day. Many people disagreed with this bill and thought it was ridiculous. Wikipedia and Google are two websites that disapproved this bill because it decreases the amount of viewers and information shared on there websites. There was not a lot of support for this bill. Many people started sharing their opinions by emailing congress about how much they disliked this bill. Therefore even congressmen started to disagree with the act. I disagree with the act because I think blocking off websites isn’t a way to stop copyrighting, and if websites don’t want people looking/copying there information then they should simply not put it on a website. The internet is supposed to help our society, without it the economy would be very bad.
SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that was proposed in attempt to stop the trading of illegal piracy online. The main supporters of the bill are the movie and music industry because their copyrighted materials are being shared all over the internet. If SOPA was passed, it would shut down websites that offer the trade of piracy of copyrighted material. Websites such as Google and Wikipedia are opposed to the bill because the information they share would be limited and access to some sites would be denied to the public. I don’t believe that the government should be trying to take over dealing with illegal piracy, but it should be up to the individual websites. For example, if YouTube finds out copyrighted material such as music is used in a video, they will either mute the video or take it down. If the owners of others websites think piracy of copyrighted material is getting out of hand or serving as a problem, they should do something about it themselves rather than the government shutting down the sites.
This bill was proposed by record companies and movies directors who want to make the money that they lose from people who are downloading and pirating stuff online. The main supporters being, those record companies and movies directors. This bill says that any Americans that perform any type of copyrighting and pirating will shut down any websites that are a part of the copyrighting. Companies like Google and Wikipedia are so opposed to this because there is so much information in their websites that they don't own in anyway that they could get busted for very badly. The government should not pass this bill because it shows that the internet, the number one form of online communication, will be censored, and that would be completely awful.
The Stop Online Piracy act was created to end the illegal sharing of intellectual property on the internet. This bill was mainly supported by leaders of industries that have been suffering financially from this trend. The bill allows the government to censor and hold responsible websites that host copyrighted material and the like. Companies like Google and Wikipedia are opposed to this bill because it's counter-productive to their overall goals. The conflict revealed the true influential power of internet giants and digital political action.
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and was proposed and is currently being discussed by Congress in order to stop the spread of people illegally downloading copyrighted material. The main supporters are celebrities, artist, movie directors, and basically anyone who has made copyrighted material that would lose money by the people that steal their material. The main provisions of this bill are that the site that had the copyrighted material that people illegally downloaded it from would be punished. This would be considered a very large crime and arrests could definitely be made. For example if people downloaded a song from YouTube and didn’t pay for it YouTube would get the punishment. This is why Google and Wikipedia are against this act, it is because they don’t want to be punished for people stealing copyrighted material. I do not believe that this act should go any further because I do not believe the websites should be punished for people illegally downloading copyrighted material, the people should be. Websites should just make downloading copyrighted material really hard to do by putting more security on their own website.
SOPA, meaning Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that was written to ensure the saftey and the integrity of copyrighted material. this means that any copyrighted material is not to be pirated illeagally. i for one do not think that it is worth it for the government to take an interest in this. yes it is a problem and artists are losing money in itunes because of file sharing and things like that but if you try to regulate everyones downloads it would take an impossible time and energy. there is just too much of it to try to police it would be a foolish waste of time. so i dont think this bill would ever get passed. its a foolish waste of time and money and its not what the government needs to worry about at this time.
SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill proposed in attempt to stop illegal piracy online. Although this bill is supported by the movie industry and record companies since it would be protecting their works and earn them more money, I don’t think this is an issue for the government to control so strictly. I can see why regulations need to be set up and enforced regarding online piracy. However, I think SOPA goes way too far in holding sites such as Google accountable for any copyrighted material might appear on that website. I don’t believe that the government should have such a strong power as to shut down websites. There should be some sort of regulations, but not as strict and up to the individual companies to regulate themselves and each other. For example, if a particular record company had a problem with their songs being used on a website, they could contact the company ordering them to remove the songs within a certain time period. If the website did not remove the songs or give the artist credit, the record company could file legal action against the website. I think this would be a more reasonable regulation against online piracy, rather than complete government control.
Stop Online Piracy Act is SOPA for short. This act was proposed to stop illegal online piracy which could include anything from movies to music. The purpose of this bill is to give permission to shut down the websites that lets people steal illegal pirated material. The reason Google shut down on this day was because they are opposed to SOPA. This act will make it difficult for them to post any information on their website without getting in trouble. There are many supporters of the SOPA bill. Most of them are in the music and movie industry. If everyone keeps stealing their music without paying, they won't make any profit off it. I think that this bill will never pass because they will never be able to protect and monitor everything posted without shutting down popular sites like Google and Wikipedia. In my opinion this bill should never be passed because millions of people need these sites for everyday use
SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act that has just been postponed in Congress on January 20th. Its function is to stop copyright infringement by limiting access to “piracy” sites. Its provisions include a restriction on the parts of United States search engines; SOPA dictates the inability of those sites (often foreign) to show up on their search results. This bill would restrict access to any and all sites that government officials stated to foster piracy. The main supporters are many of the big names in Hollywood, including the Motion Picture Association of America. Google, Wikipedia and other search engines are obviously against the bill and have demonstrated this through the black-out and black bar protest. Although I understand musicians, artists, and various companies of the industry are losing income based on internet piracy; I believe that censoring information on the internet isn’t the way to do this. There were many flaws with the SOPA Act, the provisions were rather ambiguous and potentially extremely harmful to search engines and other internet “bigwigs”. To be honest, I think that the government has to deal with this problem in a more realistic, less dramatic way. Instead of censoring all and any piracy sites, the government needs to find a better way of targeting individual sites and getting them off the net. Cutting the big ones would make a big difference, I believe.
SOPA was a bill which was propsed in Congress with the intentions of setting guidelines for putting an end to the online piracy of music, movies, and other copyrighted material. The main supporters of SOPA were those who own the copyrighted material that is being stolen from or on the internet. Such people would inclue musicians, producers, and the movie industry. The bill was going to give the government the ability to be able to shut down any website which hosted illegal, copyrighted material in any way. The point of this would be to restrict and eventually shut out the use of uploading, downloading and sharing illegal, copyrighted material. Wikipedia and Google were so opposed to the SOPA bill because it would limit what information and clips could be posted on their websites. The companies would have to spend lots of time and large sums of money to censor their websites to abide by the bill which would be not profitable for them. In both cases, each industry is not concerned about the actual situation but rather the money they might be losing or gaining from it which makes them seem greedy. I don't think that there's any real way for the government to battle online privacy. No matter what the government does, if people don't want to pay money for music or movies enough they'll find a way to still get the copyrighted material illegally. There's no way for the government to track everyone that gets copyrighted material illegally nevertheless arrest them and hold them in prision for years, so logically there's no real way to stop or even really control the illegal priacy.
SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, was proposed by US Representative Lamar S. Smith in order to allow the US government to fight against online copyright infringement and online piracy (especially that occurring outside of the country). Supporters of the bill include all those in the entertainment industry as well as any others who may have suffered due to copyright infringement. Some of the provisions include prohibiting advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, prohibiting the search engines from having any links to the sites (resulting in shutting the entire site down) and requiring browsers to block access to the sites. It would expand laws to a maximum penalty of 5 years on a first offense. Companies like Wikipedia are opposed to this because they believe the wording is too broad, with too many loopholes, and can be easily misused. It is also said that the bill encourages censorship and may violate the first amendment. I believe the government does need to handle the issue of online piracy, but SOPA is not the way to do so. I think it is unjust to censor websites and shut them down for containing links to infringing sites. This is almost like shutting down an entire New York block simply because 1 person sells illegal items there, or shutting down every block where any illegal activity takes place. It is also like saying to a large company that the entire company must be shut down simply because of an ad or picture that someone from outside the company put on the side of the building. This absolutely seems unreasonable when applied to the physical world, so why should the Internet be any different? The government should make a more precisely worded bill regarding piracy outside of the country, but not punishing large companies like Wikipedia simply for a link posted on their site, rather going straight to the source.
It is in the interest of the government to protect intellectual property because if the government does not act it would make the United States a less desirable place to spread merchandise of that sorts. I believe that we have the right to use intellectual property that is someone else's as we please as long as we provide credit to the artist. My personal opinion is that art should not be made to make millions but to spread artist ideas around. For movies and songs, the debut of these works comes out into the millions for many big artist, so they have little to worry about. It is my view that performing artist, like singers and bands, should make their money by actually performing. For smaller artist that depend on each one of their fans, wouldn't it be great if more people knew of your works? American's understand that artist need money to survive and are often willing to spend 20 or so dollars to support their favorite groups. Therefore, it is not necessary for the government to pass a bill like SOPA because the American people will acknowledge that their cooperation is necessary to protect our freedoms.
Before January 18, most people had probably never heard of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. Then they went on the Internet. Within a day, practically everyone who used Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, and other major websites were protesting the bill that would give the federal government rights to online censorship. The sheer magnitude of the backlash incited by these websites just goes to demonstrate how the Internet, and the information it distributes, has become vital to our daily lives. While SOPA and PIPA were intended to be aimed at combating online piracy, the ways they are drafted are much too vague and fail to place limits on the extent of government involvement in the Internet. Allowing the authorities in Washington to choose what citizens are allowed to access online sets a dangerous precedent for government control over our rights. As a teenager with a technology-rich lifestyle, I would personally prefer it if the government dropped the whole online copyright-infringement issue. However, I do concede that it is fair for artists and creators of works to receive credit and due compensation for their work. It is the sites that intentionally distribute copyrighted material for profit that should be targeted by the government. For this reason, I find the compromise OPEN Act to be the least objectionable way of handling the situation. This bill would hand jurisdiction over to the International Trade Commission, and it “focuses on foreign-based websites, includes an appeals process, and would apply only to websites that ‘willfully’ promote copyright violation.” Instead of shutting down a website like a files sharing forum, the ITC would cut off financial incentives from advertising companies and payment processors like Visa. Whether or not this ends up going into effect, I maintain that Congress must revise SOPA and PIPA to protect the free domain of the Internet. It would also be advisable for these revisions to be made by people who understand the “architecture” of the Internet. This isn’t the same as allowing tech supporters to “win” over Hollywood; we have to trust that they are not drafting these rewrites with only their interests in mind. This might be a tough sell for the media industry. Still, let it be mentioned that the government was still able to shut down MegaUpload this past week even without the powers provided in SOPA and PIPA. So, the government can still act to discourage online piracy without such legislation.
Kelly Gunneson
SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) was proposed in order to control piracy on the internet. It was meant to keep websites from posting copywritten media without the written consent of the artist or film industry. The bill will prosecute all websites that contain copyrighted information or media without stated consent and possibly shut them down. It will also cause people who post videos, music, etc that contain copyrighted information to face up to 3 years in prison. This could cause innocent people to be put in jail by simply posting a video of themselves dancing with a song playing in the background without the written permission from the artist. Companies like Wikipedia and Google are so opposed to SOPA because it could cause them to be shut down if they provide links or information that includes copywritten information without written consent. These websites are meant to help people find information easily but the bill could cause them to lose this ability. However, people working in the film, television, and the music industry support this bill. This debate reveals that competing interests can use their resources to distribute their view on the bill. For example, many people were unaware of the SOPA bill before Wikipedia went dark for a day. Wikipedia only gave negative press about the topic so many people only know the negative opinion about the bill. Competing interest groups with more interaction with the people will be more successful in promoting their idea with the public.
I do not agree with the SOPA bill. The government should handle the issue of piracy with a different approach. Rather than take such an extreme approach such as SOPA, the government should find a compromise bill. The government does need to provide protection of piracy but should not prosecute those for simply including a copyrighted song in the background of their video without written permission. They need to create a more specific bill that targets the big offenders.
SOPA is a bill that was proposed to stop Piracy Online. It was meant to restrict websites from releasing pirated files. Many people were against this bill because it was to censor the internet, and many people didn't like that. Not very many people support this bill. In protest, some websites went down for the day to show they did not approve of this bill. So many americans enjoy the freedom we get on the internet, so hopefully this bill would not be passed. Why would the government think this is the best way to battle piracy?
Sopa stands for the stop online piracy act, it is a proposed bill that will greatly reduce internet freedom by limiting file sharing. Sites like mega upload which are used worldwide to download movies and music illegally. I believe that this is an uneccesary measure. Sopa has the power to shut down any website it deems illegal. Sopa will shut down websites, but still not be able to limit america's piracy. That is why i do not agree with sopa, and believe it is not necesary.
Sopa (stop online piracy act) and pipa, are bills that we're proposed to stop the copyright issues and piracyI all over the internet. This bill would shut down access to the websites with piracy content. The main supporters of the bill are big businesses such as disney and record and movie companys. Google and wikapedia are opposed to the bill because it would restrict the sites and information that could normally be retained. Google and wikapedia are against the government regulating the internet because its violates the rights as a free citizen. The main people against this bill are the americans who use google and wikapedia often and don't want their searches and data to be restricted. I feel that if a bill like this would be proposed again, it would be struck down immediately. America is a free country and limiting our internet use is taking away our right to knowledge and to be free.
Sopa was proposed to protect against online plegorism. It was strongly supported by the movie and music industry To protect them from having there products stolen. The we're against having there music and videos stolen and put on YouTube and they were tired of having there stuff listed an written about on line with out there permission by companies like google and wikipedia. The industry wants to stop sites like google and YouTube and charge people who plegoris with jail sentences. In response google and Wikipedia protested as there sites that are used by many people would be shut down. The government shouldn't really have that much online control as that really isnt part of there business. They don't even have time to deal with problems in the real world why should they have to deal with this online problem where movie and music company's who are charging people money to heart here there voice are having there voice stolen? Most artist are putting there music online any way for people to hear it for free. And when they do sell there music on sites like iTunes the artist only get a small percentage o that money. Most of the money being stolen from piracy is being stolen from companies that don't do anything but market. Also this Sopa act doesn't just stop those songs and videos from being stolen because the government can't just stop that. There going to just shut down entire sites. And that's not fair.
SOPA was a bill proposed to try to stop online piracy. The supporters of the bill want SOPA to stop online piracy of movies, music, and photos. The media were big supporters of the bill because it would stop people from pirating their products. The media are the ones SOPA would help most because they are currently losing money due to online piracy. The websites such as wikipedia and google oppose the bill because the the information on their sites would go against the bill and they would get in trouble and be forced to shut down.
The government should not use the regulations set by SOPA to regulate the issue of online piracy. They should fix the issue by having companies sign in new parts to their privacy policy. They should not be charged for past piracy because if that is how we approach the issue there will never be an end. This can only be stopped by adding in pieces to their privacy or terms of use policies that state that the people taking part in the piracy will be the ones charged for piracy. Google, for example, just changed their privacy policy and terms of use to a much shorter document so that if they do need to add in changes such as the ones I have previously stated they can do so and people will actually read the additions. By adding this into Google's services the people will be less likely to commit an act of piracy, therefore making the issue easier to manage.
SOPA is a bill that means stop online piracy act. This was proposed because there have been a lot of people using the Internet to downlaod illegl content instead of buying it. There is also a lot of copyrighting on websites, and in most cases the people making the website don't think it's a big deal. If this bill were to be passed, the websites linked with the copyrighted material would be held responsible. The main websites that this would impact are google, YouTube, wikipedia, and other information and video websites. Most of the material on these websites are copied and SOPA would make all of this content illegal. I do not think SOPA is a good idea simply because it would limit the Internet too much. The internet wouldn't be able to evolve and get better because there would be far too many restrictions. However, I do think there should be a limit and there should be less illegal downloadable content. There really isn't anything the government can do about this besides completely restricting everything. People are happy with how the Internet is now, and SOPA would definitely change that
The semester is OVER! If it's not in, it's too late.
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, which is a bill in congress to stop copyrighting by taking sites off the internet that have pirated information copied from something else. The main supporters of the SOPA bill are the movie industry, the music industry, and anyone who has lost copyrighted material because of piracy. The bill gives the government the right to shut down ay website that has pirated information, but its hard to keep track of on sites like Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube, which are opposed to this bill. Especially Google is opposed because millions of people search on the site every day and if something pirated shows up from ones search, it is Google’s responsibility. This bill has a slim chance of passing because of the most popular websites it would wipe out. Millions of Americans are already emailing congress men about it.
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