Current Events I - SOPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is definitely one of the most influential acts as far as online piracy in general is concerned. Even though copyright infringement was already made illegal through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, SOPA is trying to take copyright protection at least one level up (Pepitone 2014). The main reason for the Stop Online Piracy Act to come in place was the fact that a large amount of pirated music, videos, software and other content is stored on and distributed through servers and websites outside of the United States. SOPA was therefore given he right to block or even shut down any website that was considered to not follow the rules. This posed a question whether the act is gambling with freedom of speech and artistic development of music, cinematography and software production. At the point when individuals as well as certain groups of people or companies started to notice that SOPA might potentially be infringing their rights, an outbreak of anti-SOPA acts and official statements took place. Even president Obama mentioned that he “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression” (Phillips 2012). Jerry Brito also stated "Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy? Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech?" (2012). Brito’s statement suggests that not also is SOPA violating the rights of free speech but also disregards the fact that the United States should first take care of their own copyright infringement before telling other countries to do so. Many protests were held against passing of the SOPA, such as Wikipedia blackout with 162 million views or Google’s anti-SOPA petition with more than 4.5 million signatures, which in the end led to postponing the entire act, meaning that it was unofficially not passed (Paul 2012).

Brito, Jerry. "Congress’s Piracy Blacklist Plan: A Cure Worse than the Disease?" Time. Time, 07 Nov. 2011. Web. 12 May 2014.

Paul, Ian. "Were SOPA/PIPA Protests a Success? The Results Are In | PCWorld." PCWorld. N.p., 19 Jan. 2012. Web. 01 May 2014.

Pepitone, Julianne. "SOPA Explained: What It Is and Why It Matters."CNNMoney. Cable News      Network, 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 07 May 2014.

Phillips, Macon. "Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy." The White House. The White House, 14 Jan. 2012. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.