Politics & Government

POLL: How are the SOPA/PIPA 'Black Out' Protests Affecting You?

Today Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and a smattering of web properties are "going black" and restricting access to protest the SOPA/PIPA bills on the congress' agenda.

Today is the largest online protest ever. It is the SOPA Strike.

This morning the "Washington Post" reported on several major websites participating in today's "black out" protest of SOPA and PIPA, including Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Wordpress, Flickr, Twitpic, etc.

Not sure what all the protesting is about? 

Find out what's happening in Cantonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. Freebase describes the bill as:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act. The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. 

Find out what's happening in Cantonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

A Mashable opinion writer pointed out why so many people are against the bills' sweeping powers.

"Effectively, this bill gives the attorney general the power to fully censor foreign sites that the government does not have jurisdiction to take down directly. The most immediate example is WikiLeaks — under such an order, your ISP would be forced to block your access to Wikileaks. Once the technical means to do this are in place, then it becomes very easy for this power to be extended.

Implementing censorship protocols and giving the keys to the government is a scaryscary thing, and SOPA should be opposed simply based on this provision alone. But that’s not all...

Simply the act of not actively screening every piece of content makes you a criminal under SOPA."

Basically, the bill - if taken to extreme measures - can enforce prison time, fines and shut down channels if a suspected copyright infringement is made, without significant evidence that the content producer would want such action.

According to "The Daily News," PIPA stands for Senate’s Protect IP Act. 

The Daily News report stated, "SOPA also requires search engines to delete links to offending websites from their search results, while PIPA does not.

Both bills require advertisers and payment services not to do business with sites accused of piracy. They also allow internet service providers to preemptively block websites they believe are dedicated to piracy."

What would you do if Patch went black for a day? Forever?


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here