At midnight, some of the most popular websites are going on strike to protest possible changes to anti-piracy laws. Elizabeth Brackett and her panel examine whether the internet blackout will affect the "Stop Online Piracy Act" in Congress, on Chicago Tonight at 7:00 pm.
In the meantime, here’s a quick breakdown of what the proposed laws are.
SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill in the House aimed at curbing copyright infringement, which proponents of the bill say cost the U.S. $58 billion each year. PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, is a similar bill in the Senate.
If users upload copyrighted material (like an album or movie) to a website like YouTube or Flickr, current laws allow copyright holders—movie studios, record labels, publishing houses and more—to ask for the content to be removed. If it isn’t, they can be sued.
But those laws don’t affect foreign websites, where most of the illegal material is hosted, so SOPA and PIPA are targeting how most people access those sites: by typing them into their address bar, or searching for them on Google or other search engines. Under both, copyright holders could prevent internet service providers, such as Comcast or Verizon, from allowing you to access blacklisted websites and force search engines to exclude the websites from their results.
While the bills have attracted almost unilateral support from lawmakers and media companies, opponents have compared the measures to the Chinese government’s practice of online censorship. A number of prominent websites (including Google, Facebook, Twitter and eBay) have voiced opposition, printing a letter in The New York Times. They say the new rules would hold websites responsible if they even inadvertently link to copyrighted material—a news article that linked to a YouTube video that is later taken down due to infringement.
“We support the bills’ stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting,” the letter said. “Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites.”
Some websites are protesting by “going dark” on Wednesday, including Wikipedia and the internet forum Reddit. A full list can be found on SOPAStrike.com.
So far, legislators have said they will revisit the bill in upcoming sessions and will consider amendments.
What are your thoughts on SOPA? Is it an appropriate tool to fight piracy? Sound off on our discussion board!
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Skeptic Tank to also go dark
Skeptic Tank at http://www.SkepticTank.Org is also going dark in the morning, it is ranked 138,845 in the United States, 547,194 globally.
Despite the Obama regime trying to lay low on this SOPA act of treason against our country, the blackout is going forward since it's obvious the Wall Street traitors will try to commit this against our country again once the current outrage dies down.
SOPA Bill. Stop internet censership
Thanks for the discussion on this legislation it has not been given much attention in the media. We have to protect the freedom of the internet. This legislation is very dangerous in that it will restrict our freedom. It will also stifle innovation. It would have prevented You Tube and Facebook from developing. I don't think the people in congress understand the issue.
The interests that are pushing for this legislation are the same ones that were opposed to the VCR for the same reasons. People will still go to the Movies. Good thing they didn't get their way then. Barb Gordon
New media and technology have
New media and technology have flattened the playing field, making it easy to share, innovate and not get stuck in the artificial gateways and roadblocks of old methods and old media. These bills are old media's attempt to win back control because they don't like this new media world that gives choice, power and freedom to users.
It will be a tragedy if Congress allows either of these bills to proceed. Piracy will flourish regardless, but piracy is just the excuse for the bills..make no mistake, this is about control over the Internet.
See http://www.openlineblog.com for their excellent review of SOPA and PIPA's impact.
SOPA
The two lawyers on your Soap panel gave a very unbalanced view of the tech, free speech, and media control issues that this bill potentially impacts. They essentially gave the movie industry talking points and the dismissed the power of social media and knowledge sites like Wiki in our culture today. Although Elizabeth tried to ask probing questions, the guests fluffed over them. Since there was no new media panel member, the discussion was very one sided...kinda like FOX news. Get real players on your show like you do for local politics or don't do it.
SOPA
This is just the Patriot act 2.0. There is no way any lawyer, Lobyist or politician can make this bill look any good. This also means that we would become just like comunist Russia,China and Iran.
As an online moderator it is
As an online moderator it is one of my task to look out for copyright material posted or uploaded for the many big name companies that I work for. This legislation is unnecessary. Many serious American websites do not allow copyright material becuase they can be sued with the laws that are right now in the books. They want go after the foreign sites by threatening and punishing the "slow moving" American ones. The fact is no company or goverment has full control of the internet so punishing American internet companies for something they themselves have control over will end up curtailing our freedom. This legislation is just plain bad.
WTTW, this unbalanced panel show to prove why Chicago has a long way to go before ever becoming the silicon valley of the midwest. It astounds me that this panel had no internet expert which can explain the reasons behind the opposition.
I think there are ways that
I think there are ways that Congress could revise this bill to make it seem less restrictive; but at the same time the main intent is to stop the illegal distribution of media. The internet is a place where the sky is the limit.. But that doesn't justify theft. Record companies lose millions of dollars a year because of the never-ending copyright infringements from file sharing websites, bit torrents, and programs like Frostwire. Though Limewire was shut down, people are still getting their music for free one way or another instead of paying for it LEGALLY. It's stealing. It's taking money from artists and the record labels that pay/ represent them. An artist would be considered lucky to go on an all-expenses-paid tour. Nowadays up and coming artists go on tours city to city sleeping in their cars. Record companies just can't afford to cover the expenses anymore because their respective revenues are so low; most labels are lucky to break even by the end of the year. And that's not even the half of it. It's getting ridiculous. The music and movie industries are in horrible positions right now and whether or not these bills are the best way to fix the widespread problem of copyright infringement on the internet, something really needs to be done.
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