The Whirlwind of SOPA and PIPA around the World

In recent days, the SOPA and PIPA bills have been successful, finding place in the top headlines. Both of these are U.S bills that set sights on websites that contravene copyrighted material. The proposed laws are generally associated with media piracy and forged client goods online. The  PIPA  (an acronym for the Protect IP Act) , that  was introduced on May 12, 2011 in the U.S Senate, by Senator Patrick Leahy backed by many co-sponsors, is a new version of the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act”  which failed to pass in 2010 at the U.S Senate. SOPA (an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act) was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Lamar Smith on October 26, 2011. SOPA is also build on an earlier PRO-IP Act of 2008 which also failed to pass earlier.

It has been observed that people all around the world are persistently protesting against these bills. PIPA aims at giving the US government and exclusive rights holders supplementary tools to restrain right to use to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", in particular those that are recorded outside the U.S. SOPA assures the U.S government and the companies the power to compose a hit list against those who try to breach intellectual property rights that have been indicated. According to SOPA, the U.S. Attorney General has the authority to seek a court order to compel various search engines, servers, DNS providers and payment processors from having any contact with supposedly blacklisted websites.

These acts are confronting massive protests on large scales. What is being fought for is to prevent media conglomerations from closing sites down based solely on allegations. The bills would wreck the online market and the on the whole the liberty of the web too. Sites and search engines with heavy user generated content like YouTube, Facebook and others may close down if these bills are passed. These bills are hindering developers from coming up with another gigantic mania in the online market that could revolutionize the internet and consequently stopping innovation.  

To show their protests against the controversial legislation in the U.S. many Internet companies like Wikipedia blacked out their websites on 18^th January, 2012. Earlier, SOPA and PIPA was opposed by 31 members of Congress and supported by 80. A day later after the blackout, and the count shifted with 65 supporters and 101 opponents. Google blacked out its logo and placed a note on its home page to tell the U.S Congress not to “censor the Web”. The message was linked to a petition opposing SOPA in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate, and has been signed by over seven million people. Seeing the protest, vote on the PIPA has been postponed till 24^th January, 2012 and SOPA has been postponed "indefinitely" until a compromise is reached. Hope the bills reach an agreeable settlement.


Ms. Nitika Rawat
B.Tech CS-Oil and Gas (2nd sem)