The Stop Online Piracy Act Bill is a bad idea and infringes on the rights of the people given by the first amendment.
For those who don’t know what the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA bill is, it would allow United States law enforcement to stop piracy on copyrighted intellectual property by prohibiting search engines from connecting to certain websites and requiring internet service providers to block websites. The bill was introduced to the House of Representatives by Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX).
Stopping online piracy sounds like a great idea but the websites that would be blocked are websites that everyone has used and are commonplace in our everyday lives. Such websites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, Reddit, and potentially others like Twitter, Craigslist are at risk of being blocked. Any website that even allows a link to unauthorized copyrighted material on it could potentially be blocked because of this bill.
I personally think that this bill won’t do much to stop piracy and will only block websites that are helpful to people. I use some of these websites and it would be an inconvience if these websites were blocked. The proof that many others feel the same way is a petition started by Google that received over seven million signatures. Wikipedia and 7,000 other websites boycotted the bill by staging a one-day “blackout.”
The bill also is reported to not be very effective due to the fact that if a certain website is blocked, the site can easily be renamed and put back up in a few hours. This would of course be difficult for bigger websites like YouTube and Wikipedia but smaller websites could easily do this, and piracy would continue.
There is also the question of whether this violates the First Amendment. I think it does because it restricting what can be shared on the internet which is free and which everyone has the right to use. Once the government is controlling what we can do or say on the internet, then we obviously don’t have freedom of expression, something our founding fathers fought and died for.
A lot of representatives and politicians feel the same way and are opposed to the bill, including President Obama, House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), and many other representatives. President Obama says he “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression.” President Obama is willing to work to have the effects of this bill greatly reduced.
The most public move against the bill was the Wikipedia blackout of January 18th. Wikipedia says at least 160 million people saw the blackout banner. What Wikipedia did was perhaps one of the smartest moves in opposition of the bill. It let people know what would happen and really brought attention to the bill. The move seemed to succeed as many legislators subsequently changed their views (and potential votes) on it, and the idea was tabled until it can be modified.
I am proud that Wikipedia, Google, and many others are making a stand against unfair legislation and that the people can rally behind them and have their voice heard. SOPA is a terrible idea.