SOPA & PIPA – The Killer Twins

SOPA & PIPA - Does it ring a Bell??? If it does ring a bell and you know everything about it, then good, you don't need this post. If you have a vague idea or no idea about it, then do continue to read.

For the past few months, you can see these acronyms in many of the websites. Some of you may know that they are related to some American law, freedom of speech, piracy, etc. Let me give you an idea and how it will impact you.

Most of us download stuff from internet like songs, movies, games, softwares, etc. Whether it be through Torrents, Direct links, FTP servers, etc.  Some of these are completely FREE to use. Problem comes when you download stuff which has a price to pay. This is referred to as “Online Piracy”. As you don’t pay money for using this copyrighted material, downloading such data will drain the revenue of the companies who owns it. Piracy has no limits. Even a person in Antarctica can play “Gears of War” if he/she has an awesome laptop and good internet connection without paying for the game itself.

There is already a law in place. In this, the company can request a website to remove the webpages, links or data of infringing material. If that company doesn't notice that website or link, it will remain there and available for everybody. Also, companies don’t have a way to stop Torrents. They are not uploaded in the website servers. It is more like user-to-user sharing. Still they can close down the torrent website for supporting such activity. Website is the medium for users to initiate the sharing through torrent. If you know “thepiratebay.org” – Big torrent website, you should have heard that they were arrested in the past for piracy. This is the reason why many of the downloading forums and torrent sites have a disclaimer on their websites stating that the users are solely responsible for the content they upload and website is not liable for it.

With growing prices of movie tickets, music albums, games, softwares, number of people resorting for piracy is increasing day after day. And the companies’ revenue loss is touching a billion figure or even more. Wherever there is large money involved, lobbyists come into the picture. Now these companies are lobbying to get forth a “bill” that will curb the online piracy.

This “Bill” is named as “SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)”. It also has a sister bill – “PIPA (Protect  Intellectual Property Act). 
Generally, Piracy starts like this (Eg. Movie) :-
1. The pirate (A person) gets the movie.
2. Uploads it in a file-hostingwebsite like Rapidshare.
3. Then share the links for that movie in different forums, blogs, etc.
4. People download the movie from these links.

As per SOPA, it mainly blames the file-hosting websites and the forums or blogs which spreads the links across the internet. It wants to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from doing business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the sites, and also Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to these sites. The law will include unauthorized streaming of copyright material, which will impose penalty of five years (Maximum) in prison. That would take out "Youtube". It also enables the law to block access to entire domain due to infringing material posted on a single blog or post. This would threaten blogging sites like Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, etc. It is unfair to block a whole domain just because of a single blog. This kind of website censorship is seen in China, where people use many techniques and tools to bypass this.

Recently, Megaupload - A popular file-hosting website was seized by FBI because of the infringing material. You can go to the website and check it for yourself. Already many file-hosting websites are reviewing their services and business plans to ensure that they are not impacted by the law. For example, FileSonic - A File-hosting website. Before any person can upload any file in this website without an account. If a person has an account and uploads a file, he can share that link with outside world to download. But now,  it restricted the functionality. Every upload requires an account. Only the person who uploaded the file, can download it through his account. 

It's Americans who are mostly impacted by this, for obvious reason (Hey, it's American bill). There are many popular U.S websites which face the threat, as the U.S govt not only restrict access to these websites, they will also hold them responsible for the infringing material found on their website. This would eventually lead to the shutdown of the websites. So people around world will be affected with this. 

If a person uploads a movie to Rapidshare and then shares the link in Facebook. If it gets reported, Facebook will be shut down as it is a U.S website and comes under the purview of the Bill. Rapidshare will be banned across the U.S. They can't shut it down as it is not a U.S website. So, you see Facebook will be shut down in U.S. But still there is a work-around. They can move out of U.S so that they are not liable. Still they will lose lot of customers in the form of U.S citizens. 


I think nobody should have a problem in bringing forth a bill that will curb the online piracy. But it should not effect the Internet, where innovation is always at work. Presently, Freedom of speech is mostly found in the internet than in the real world. Nobody wants to give away such freedom. The bill needs to be tailored so that it doesn't affect other aspects of the Internet. So exercise your freedom of speech in the internet and spread the awareness about these bills. Post a Facebook status, tweet, update the Gtalk Status, etc.

* Happy Surfing *