Sopa and Pipa

SOPA/ PIPA



In times of a progressive world, humans have reached a point, where online piracy is a serious threat to the economics and society of all countries, Specially the US and other Western nations, as most of the business is closely related to the Internet. For digital media, the computers and particularly the Internet have greatly simplified unauthorized sharing i.e., without the permission of the content creator, potentially depriving content creators of income from their work. This situation came to the center with the widespread use of MP3 compression for music, which greatly reduced the size of music files, easing their transmission from one party to another. In response to the perceived threat that content sharing has created as well as aimed to block resources and websites which have copyright infringement, two bills have come to the federal government: SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act also known as Protect IP Act). Specifically, their goal is to hit sites that exist on servers that are outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Both SOPA and PIPA try to cut off access to sites hosted on foreign servers. They do this by forcing Ad Network, search engine (e.g. Google,) and payment services (e.g. PayPal, Credit card Processing Companies.) to cut off tie to the foreign sites.


SOPA has several positive characteristics that make it a valuable bill. It defines a foreign infringing site as any site that is committing or facilitating copyright infringement, whereas PIPA targeted only domain name system providers, financial companies, and ad networks--not to the companies that provide Internet connectivity. “For example, current copyright enforcement laws have minimal effect on the large number of foreign websites that sell counterfeit products.” As such, rights holders have become frustrated with the current copyright enforcement laws. “As per the new law, copyright owners would have the right to shut down any... [continues]

Read full essay