The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The aim of the bill is to help U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders fight online transmission of restricted intellectual property.Hearings in the House of Representatives on the Stop Internet Piracy Act began Wednesday, sparking a campaign by dozens of companies to keep the bill from becoming law. The bill’s supporters include the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. Its opponents include Google, Facebook, and other tech giants that host third-party content, putting them at risk if the legislation passes.
Stop Online Piracy Act was designed to “promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes,” according to the bill’s sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith, the GOP chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. It would allow the government to order service providers to shut down websites it finds have violated copyright laws by illegally distributing protected material. The government’s reach would also extend to search engines, which would be required to remove those websites from its results.
The bill aims to curb illegal distribution of music, movies and software, is under attack by users of the Internet’s most popular Web sites, who say that the legislation is tantamount to censorship. The bill puts artists in a tricky place: On one hand, it protects their work. On the other hand, it could prohibit the collaborative creativity that the Internet enables and curb viral marketing that can help an artist’s career.
Stop Online Piracy Act would also grant the Justice Department the right to target internationally operated websites, as well as domestic ones.
“The solutions are draconian,” Google chairman Eric Schmidt said during an appearance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The bill “would require (Internet service providers) to remove URLs from the web, which is also known as censorship last time I checked.”
Rep. Smith says his bill “will stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators.”
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