Columbia Heights, Minnesota
By Gabe Hewitt, iLander Student Editor
If you're a user of the Internet and haven't been living under a rock the past couple weeks, you probably have some idea of what SOPA and PIPA are. The recently shelved bills by Congress caused a stir among users of popular websites such as Google, Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook.
SOPA stands for the “Stop Online Piracy Act.” According to CNN, the proposed bill in the U.S. House of Representatives would stop foreign-based websites that sell pirated movies, music and other forms of media. If the bill were to be approved, there would be a crackdown on major websites that people take for granted everyday. The government already has the power to shut down a website that offer pirated content and have already done so with MegaUpload.
Foreign pirating websites such as PirateBay.org would also be targeted. Websites like them make most of their money from advertising. Many companies lose billions of dollars from pirated content because it isn't purchased. The ultimate goal of SOPA would be to stop online piracy. Blocking websites such as PirateBay would make them lose revenue from advertisements and they would eventually shut down themselves.
"I think it's an extreme idea just to try and control certain things on the Internet," said CHHS senior Jacob Trombley.
The real commotion the bill caused was the fear that popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be shut down due to their sometimes pirated content, and free speech would be blocked in other similar online communities. YouTube could also have been shut down since so much pirated video is uploaded to the site daily. Trombley says he would probably stop using the Internet if Facebook and YouTube were shut down.
The bill would also affect how search engines like Google operate. If a website were home to any kind of pirated content, it would not show up in search results.
A similar bill in the U.S. Senate, PIPA (“Protect IP Act”) has been put on hold as well. PIPA also aims to stop piracy, but it is not as extreme as SOPA.
Several large Internet companies and many individuals alike launched an Internet protest of the bills. Advertisements against SOPA and PIPA could be seen on popular websites. Google users saw a black bar across the logo on the company’s homepage to show how the bills could censor it. On Jan. 26, Wikipedia, which would also be affected by the bills, blacked out its website in protest. All of these measures helped to lead some of the support to disappear that lawmakers had for the bills.
"Piracy is going to happen whether they block access to it or not," said CHHS junior Wilson Sofjan. "If the bills were passed, we'd have to join the rest of the world that has limited Internet access, which then kills the point of having freedom over the Internet."
Although the bills have been put on hold, there is always a chance that they could come back. The world of the Internet is an enormous place and blocking it in any way will cause a ruckus from its users.
(Photo: CHHS Junior Wilson Sofjan represents the side that protests SOPA and PIPA. Photo illustration by Sofjan.)