In October of 2011 Texas Representative Lamar Smith introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act to the United States House of Representatives. The bill boasts heightened copyright laws that claim to protect free speech and creativity while it actually accomplishes the opposite. Online service providers, or OSPs, are the target of SOPA legislation. SOPA places liability for copyright law infringing content on innocent corporations that merely provide a platform for users to share content. Most importantly SOPA will tear down copyright safe harbors that provide protection to users and OSPs who have inadvertently committed copyright infringement and gives them a chance to reverse their actions. SOPA as it stands remains too harsh to possibly have a
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In the panel of Stanford professors who were answering the questions of the public population there were only two supporters of the bill found. Both came from the Motion Picture Association of America (Hoyt). MPAA workers have a huge bias towards SOPA because of MPAA creates a large amount of copyrighted content. Those that support heightened copyright laws are nearly only content creators. According to a list authored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas there are 142 organizations that support SOPA (Smith). According to a list authored by the Center for Democracy and Technology there are over 1000 of the largest OSP’s and notable individuals in the world that oppose SOPA (CDT). With outstanding numbers of opposition it must be asked if SOPA is correct for targeting OSP’s like Facebook and Twitter for users that access infringing content on foreign websites or the users themselves. A more appropriate bill to pass would be one that begs access from the government of countries that allow online piracy to block the infringing sites access to U.S. networks. This would prevent U.S. internet users from infringing with foreign hosted content. U.S. OSPs would not be hurt by this legislation and free speech is preserved
In the panel of Stanford professors who were answering the questions of the public population there were only two supporters of the bill found. Both came from the Motion Picture Association of America (Hoyt). MPAA workers have a huge bias towards SOPA because of MPAA creates a large amount of copyrighted content. Those that support heightened copyright laws are nearly only content creators. According to a list authored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas there are 142 organizations that support SOPA (Smith). According to a list authored by the Center for Democracy and Technology there are over 1000 of the largest OSP’s and notable individuals in the world that oppose SOPA (CDT). With outstanding numbers of opposition it must be asked if SOPA is correct for targeting OSP’s like Facebook and Twitter for users that access infringing content on foreign websites or the users themselves. A more appropriate bill to pass would be one that begs access from the government of countries that allow online piracy to block the infringing sites access to U.S. networks. This would prevent U.S. internet users from infringing with foreign hosted content. U.S. OSPs would not be hurt by this legislation and free speech is preserved