Today, in our online world it is easier than ever to find and download free movies, music or other pirated content with just the click of your mouse. Applications like Lime Wire, Frost Wire, Pirate Bay, Media Fire and many others have made file ‘sharing’ an easy alternative to purchasing content.
In 2011 SOPA was introduced by Texas Representative Lamar S. Smith and brought before the House floor. SOPA is an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act which restricted sites hosting pirated content. The Act’s main target was combat overseas sites which offered file sharing and streaming of U.S. copyrighted material. If passed, SOPA would have required internet providers to block access to sites which law enforcement officials deemed to be promoting illegal content.
Under the most severe versions of the act Wikipedia would be classified as a search engine and would then be prohibited from linking to sites like Pirate Bay even within the encyclopedic definition of that particular site. The bill would also have forced search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to censor certain search results that were flagged as inappropriate and contained infringed upon copyrighted material. Opponents of the bill argued that SOPA would promote censorship and hold websites responsible for their individual users actions.
On January 18th, 2012 a mass protest was carried out in opposition to the SOPA legislation. Craig’s List, Reddit, and Flicker along with hundreds of other websites banded together and featured some sort of anti internet censorship messaging. The public also joined in and 80,000 calls to congress were made as well as 2,000,000 signatures collected opposing the bill that day.
Google, one of the bill’s most outspoken opponents even blacked out in protest.
Wikipedia was also shut down for the day.
After the demonstrations, blackouts and protests lawmakers began to see how unpopular the bill had become on a nationwide basis and the potential legislation was abandoned on January 20th, 2012 and indefinitely postponed. It’s author Representative Smith said “I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”
How do you feel?
Do you consider sharing music, programs or other digital content with your friends or family to be illegal? What kinds of laws should be put in place to protect online content?
