SOPA!

The 'Stop Online Piracy Act' (SOPA) is a bill in the United States which is hoping to "to expand the abiliy of U.S law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods".

The passing of the bill would of offered major corporations the opportunity to request court orders to forbid advertising networks and payment facilities (e.g, Google and PayPal) from conducting business with infringing website, if they feel their intellectual property was being infringed.

Movie studios, record labels and publishers sought after this bill, concerned about the loss of revenue that online piracy has inflicted. The aim is to prohibit U.S search engines to stop referring services which are promoting copyright, and piracy.

The counter-argument to SOPA came from internet phenomenons, like Wikipedia, and Mark Zuckerberg, with the former shutting down for 24 hours, and just displaying an anti-SOPA homepage. 7,000 different websites across the globe joined the protest, and a petition opposing the bill reached 4.5 million.

The argument against SOPA, is that it will result in a policing of the internet, and the major corporation and government will monopolise what we see, hear, think online. The takeover of the internet would end  
the right to free-speech in an online sense.

In response to the overwhelming results of Wikipedia's protest, senators, who supported the bill have backed off, and distanced themselves from the bill. In total 18 representatives said they no longer "approved" of the anti-piracy law.

This news was not well received in Hollywood, where major Hollywood movie moguls have pledged to stop donating to Barack Obama's re-election campaign. His "lack of support" in the bills, has resulted in this fiery, irked response.

The ease of which new movies, television programmes, and other media, can be streamed, downloaded, saved, distributed, for free. Record labels, movie studios will complain about the loss of revenue.

I personally believe that SOPA will prohibit and monopolise the intermet, starting a world where the corporate 'bigwigs' control what we see, read, listen to online.

SOPA being rejected is, in my opinion good for the majority of online users. However I firmly believe that the fight against piracy has a lot of chapters to be read.