SOPA & PIPA – What You Need to Know

What is SOPA?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, the name for a proposed law introduced in the United States House of Representatives. It is designed to extend the powers of US officials to tackle unauthorised copying and distribution of copyrighted material over the Internet.

What’s the difference between SOPA and PIPA?

PIPA (full name the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PROTECT IP) is a bill covering much the same points as SOPA, but introduced in the US Senate. This is a common procedural tactic used to increase the chances of one of the bills passing into law.

What are the main measures of SOPA?

SOPA is primarily designed to cover situations where existing laws are insufficient to tackle piracy. This includes cases where the website in question is legally registered and hosted in countries that are not willing to comply with US demands to take legal or physical action against alleged offenders.

SOPA allows US courts to take indirect action by ordering third parties that are under US jurisdiction to take action that restricts the ability of alleged offenders to distribute material. Examples include ordering internet service providers to block access to the site, ordering search engines to stop linking to the site, and ordering companies such as PayPal to not process payments for the site concerned. Exactly what orders the court could make depends on whether it is the US Department of Justice or the copyright holder that asks the court to take action.

The bill also includes several new offences such as distributing streaming video content without permission, and increases the penalties for selling counterfeit goods and pharmaceuticals.

What are the main criticisms of the bill?

Generally critics do not object to the concept of tackling online piracy. Instead they argue that the bill has been written by politicians with limited technical knowledge who have been lobbied by the movie and music industries but have not consulted adequately with Internet experts. Opponents say the result is a bill that gives courts too many powers and could effectively destroy online businesses without them having a fair chance to defend themselves.

One particular criticism is that an entire site could theoretically be indirectly shut down for a single infringement. It’s also been argued that the bill contradicts the previously established principle that sites with user generated content (such as YouTube or message boards) are not legally responsible for that content as long as they remove illegal material upon request.

What has happened to the bill?

Several major websites, most notably Wikipedia, blocked access to their pages on January 18th as a protest against the bill, while Google persuaded seven million users to sign a petition against it. Amid this protest, the White House indicated that President Obama would not sign the bill in its current form, meaning that even if politicians passed the legislation, they would need to modify it before it could become law. On January 20th, the politicians who introduced SOPA and PIPA both announced they would put the bills on hold until a more widely accepted solution could be found.