book

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

21 Pages 1839 Words 1557 Views

Online piracy is becoming a big problem all over the world. Online piracy is the act of stealing someone’s copyrighted idea, such as music, games, pictures, movies and many more things. Online piracy is a big problem because the creator of the things being copyrighted is not being paid for what he/she created, online piracy is stealing. People get in trouble for stealing so why should so many people get away with pirating things over the internet? Congress has started trying to pass laws about online policy, such as The Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA, and congress also tried to pass PIPA. Online piracy is all over the world so it affects most people The Stop Online Piracy Act, or as to most, known as SOPA, is an act trying to be passed through legislation. The Stop Online Piracy Act would allow copyright holders and the Justice Department to seek court orders against websites associated with copyright infringement. This means that if the original copyright holder thinks that your site is participating in copyright infringement than not only will the copyrighted item will be removed, but the whole site will be removed as well. This means that if this law is passed there will basically be no internet. If the Stop Online Piracy Act is passed than the internet will basically be pointless, almost all of the internet’s websites will be shut down; there will be no more Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or even Google (Johnson). When the Stop Online Piracy Act wants to take down a website for copyright infringement then they have the freedom to do so, and the website will be removed without a court order or anything. “Copyright holders like movie studios can also invoke a ‘private right of action’ against just about any company that does business with a website that copyright holders believe to be involved in copyright infringement. Copyright holders can demand that payment processors to cut off the flow of money to a website or that search engines eliminate links to it without ever entering a courtroom. Movie studios and record labels can also require online advertising networks on the website and Internet service providers from hosting the site” (Johnson). Companies are allowed to protest any of the acquisitions that the copyright holders make, but the company must get involved in a court action to object. If the company is right, The Stop Online Piracy Act would give the website legal immunity since the company was falsely accused. Also internet service providers and payment processors could not be sued for taking action against sites that were not doing anything illegal. So if a movie was streaming on a site, SOPA could ask the justice department to obtain a court order to shut down the website, make credit card companies stop sending money to the website and remove the site from Google search (Johnson). SOPA is trying to do the right thing by outlawing illegal piracy but they are doing it in the wrong way. SOPA is way too strict; they need to lessen the law in order to gain progress with this bill. There are littl

Read Full Essay