Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)

This bill that is currently in the House is a very hot topic in Washington DC and across the web.


What is it supposed to do?

The bill's core agenda is to protect intellectual property from online piracy.


Who could it affect?

Anyone with an online presence.  That means those that publish online content & those that consume online content.


Why should I care?

Anyone could be liable for facilitating, transferring, enabling, or referencing pirated content or content that doesn't have the author's permission to be shared.

Here is an example:
Johnny is doing a blog post on sites to avoid that hosts pirated movies searches in Google.com for Ironman movie torrent and gets a hit from www.fakesiteforpiratedmovies.com.  If Johnny links the site and references that the latest Ironman movie being torrented there, given the wording of the bill, all parties in that example could be liable.  That means, Google.com & the fake movie site would be blocked.  Johnny would be sued or serve jail time just for linking or referencing the site!

The bill's vague wording would also incriminate anyone that lies about themselves online.  Isn't that what makes the web THE WEB?


What the hell do I do about it?

Here are a few things you can do:

• Write your representative
• Boycott those that are lobbying for or supporting SOPA
• Keep track of SOPA-related news and events
• If the bill gets passed, you could still access a blocked site via IP address since the bill only would block the "incriminating" domain name.

Here are the companies that are supporting SOPA.  Lets start by voting with our dollars.