SOPA

    SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act was a huge fiasco last year. I remember Google blacking out its banner and wikipedia shutting down. SOPA allows the U.S law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. It allows the United States to increase copyright laws, even including foreign websites without any act of law. It also allows the

“Attorney General to see a court order against a U.S directed foreign Internet site committing or facilitating online piracy to require the owner, operator, or domain name registrant, or the site or domain name itself if such persons are unable to be found, to cease and desist further activities constituting specified intellectual property offenses under the federal criminal code including criminal copyright infringement, unauthorized fixation and trafficking of sound recordings or videos of live musical performances, the recording of exhibited motion pictures, or trafficking in counterfeit labels, goods, or services.”

In other words the discretion is up to the Attorney General to decide whether it falls under the policy or not. SOPA, which is trying to protect intellectual property and job, does not protect jobs at all. “64 percent of the people are opposed to government censorship on infringed material.” This basically says that most of America would be irate if SOPA would fall through. About 50 percent of all Americans have downloaded free content from the Internet. Most of America do support fines but the amount is much lower than the statutory penalty.

         Thankfully many individuals took it to themselves to gain more insight about SOPA thanks to sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Mozilla. In doing so, it created four calls per second and a million E-mails to Congress in a single day. (Herman, 8) In a time of election, this just shows the government is taking apart in a place where they should not be welcomed and boosting censorship will instill more fear in Americans. If the government can control the Internet then what can they not control? The SOPA bill makes us all criminals and would turn me away from using the Internet because my common Internet usage would be criminalized under the law.