What is SOPA and what will it do? (AKA HR.3261 and The E-PARASITE Act)

What is SOPA (H.R. 3261) exactly?

(AKA The E-PARASITE Act)

Official Bill Summary: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@D&summ2=m&

-Gives the Attorney General the ability to seek a court-order to stop website owners, hosts, or domain registrars who are committing or facilitating copyright infringement... including but not limited to music, movies or counterfeit goods.
-Creates a process to allow a copyright holder, in some circumstances, to require a "payment network providers " (PayPal, Visa, etc) or "Internet advertising services" (Google AdSense, etc) to stop doing business with suspected copyright infringers. Process is similar to DMCA notification/counter-notification process.
-Will require Internet service providers, search engines, payment networks and advertising networks to comply with a court order requested by the Attorney General to withhold service or block "infringing sites".
-Provides immunity to service providers, (etc), who comply with actions required by this law. (similar to DMCA safe-harbor clauses)
-Gives some authority to block websites that specialize in providing prescription medication that is counterfeit or provided without a prescription.
-Includes the text of S.978: expands the definition of criminal copyright infringement to include public performances. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x11s8trkFzM)
-Increases penalties or some trade secret related offenses and various other IP offenses.
-Directs the US Sentencing Commission to review sentencing guidelines.
-Requires the appointment of an "intellectual property attaché" for each Department of State regional bureau.


How to oppose the bill:

https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3261
https://ai360.aristotle.com/ActionAlert/TakeActionSinglePage.aspx?aam_GUID=65...
http://americancensorship.org/




Sources & Further Reading:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/garyshapiro/2011/12/07/save-the-internet-take-act...
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/?cl=1425589399&v=11332
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/e-parasite_threatens_internet.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/111511-lawmakers-seek-alternative-to-st...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/whats-blacklist-three-sites-sopa-could-...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57338178-281/critics-of-sopa-copyright-bill...
http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/kaspersky-lab-bsa-sopa.html
http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/sopa-protest.html
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• What
• is
• SOPA
• H.R. 3261
• HR 3261
• S.978
• E-PARASITE Act
• S.968
• PROTECT IP Act
• censorship
• on
• the
• internet
• Opposes
• The right to own property
• The right to free speech
• americancensorship.org
• popvox.com
• Youtube
• Internet Blacklist

[BrittanyRChamberlin]

Ok but why is it going to affect google and wikopidea?

[JuryDutySummons]

@BrittanyRChamberlin It's complicated, but in short it gives the copyright holders the ability to order google/wikipedia/facebook to remove all links to particular sites and refuse to do business with them. It could also require them to do active policing of content - at a huge cost burden.

[BrittanyRChamberlin]

I shared your video. I still don't fully understand. Why not just take down the torrent sites instead of hurting search engines?

[JuryDutySummons]

@BrittanyRChamberlin All of them are outside of the authority of the US courts. The ones inside of the USA have already been taken down.

[yocow7]

It seems nobody wants this bill passed

[stormylilac93]

JuryDutySummons for president 2012! ^^

[DontTakeMyFooty]

Ron Paul 2012

[MonkeysGFX]

@JuryDutySummons Yeah, that is true.

[JuryDutySummons]

@Tolredan Blizzard has been very supportive of YouTube and the LP community.