SOPA and PIPA simplified

If you have been on the internet at all during the past few months, then you have no doubt seen SOPA, PIPA, and more recently, ACTA, appearing in the headlines of news articles like this one or in various Youtube videos in which many “internet celebrities” address pieces of legislation that they say threaten the principle of “net neutrality”.

Unfortunately, many students and faculty here at Salt Lake Community College remain confused about the issues. We here at The Globe have decided to take it upon ourselves to decipher this madness and hopefully provide an easy-to-understand explanation.

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act was proposed to the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX.)

A similar bill, known as the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA, was proposed to the U.S. Senate on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT.)

The supporters of these bills say their purpose is to expand the duties of law enforcement to include combating online trafficking of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods.

Two major factors that lead to the resulting backlash were the weakening of the U.S. “Safe Harbor” protections and the use of Domain Name Server blocking (DNS blocking) to enforce the bill.

Under the “safe harbor” protections, if a Youtube user uploads an episode of a television series without permission from the studio, then the studio can only take action against the user and not the site that hosts it, e.g. Youtube.

Under the proposed legislation, “rogue websites” would have their domains blocked, meaning that if one person entered the address of a site that had been taken down, they would be redirected to a page that says that the site does not exist.

Blackout protests

Opposing groups were quick to take up arms and fight these bills tooth and nail. It began with ad campaign blitzes by several noted content creators, both on their sites and off, with independent companies like the internet-based Channel Awesome taking a trip to Washington D.C. to address these concerns in person.

The biggest protest came on Jan. 18, 2012, when over 7000 websites, including sites like Reddit and Wikipedia, purposefully took themselves down to protest the legislation. While not all sites went down, other sites lent their support, with Google’s petition amassing over 7 million signatures within a single day.

Both Senators Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch have officially declared their intent to oppose PIPA with Orrin Hatch no longer co-sponsoring the bill. Congressmen Jim Matheson and Jason Chaffetz are also listed as official opponents of the bill. While Utah’s representatives are opposing the legislation, the fight for the internet is far from over.

Next week, we will take a look at the further developments of internet legislation, including the actions of Anonymous and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.