SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. It's just another act that will blocked any websites that were suspects doing piracy acts like file-sharing, downloading MP3, movies and many more.
It were established to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Provisions include the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the sites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the sites. The law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyright material, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
The acts faced controversy from tech companies and Internet lovers everywhere, but recently gained widespread attention after popular websites like Google and Wikipedia were blacked out to protest the pending legislation.
If enacted, major media companies would have had the ability to shut down any site that is making commercial gain off of copied material without explicit consent of the content owner. The legislation was aimed to protect movie and music industries, which have cited substantial financial losses—an estimated $58 billion annually, according to the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI)—due to piracy and online trafficking. But the list doesn’t stop there: Yahoo, YouTube, and Twitter have also publicly opposed the bill. The White House has also announced that should the bill reach President Obama’s desk, he will veto it.
The person behind SOPA is Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas politician who’s been known mostly for his anti-immigrant stances in recent years. Smith’s got big industry backers, namely: The Recording Industry Association of American, the Motion Picture Association of America (now led by former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Regulating technology is essentially a silly thing to do. It changes so fast; you just can't make laws quickly enough.
Source: Wikipedia
The DePaulia
Colorlines
p/s: I do think SOPA is another way for the rich people to take care of their $$$.
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