Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Stop Online Piracy Act: What You Need to Know



Wondering what’s going on with the Stop Online Piracy Act, otherwise known as SOPA? Here’s an infographic that boils it all down to the key points for you.

Protests against the bill now under consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives have reached a fever pitch today, kicked off by a letter from Facebook, Google, Twitter, eBay, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL and Zynga to congressional sponsors of the bill. That letter appeared in The New York Times as a full-page ad on Wednesday.

There’s a hearing on that bill going on today (Nov. 16) in the House Judiciary Committee. The bill has a good chance of passage, because it’s backed by powerful corporate interests and bipartisan majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate.

Among its proponents are the Motion Picture Association of America, union representatives such as the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO who say it might save jobs, and U.S. Registrar of Copyrights Maria Pallante. According to Talking Points Memo, Pallante said in the hearing today, “It is my view that if Congress does not continue to provide serious responses to online piracy, the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail.”

In opposition to that bill, public petitions are circulating, urging President Obama to veto the legislation, known by its opponents as the “E-Parasite Act.”

As with any bill, it’s complicated, but this infographic boils it down. An activist group organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Creative Commons, Mozilla, Public Knowledge, the Free Software Foundation and others who oppose the bill, created the infographic.


Source : Mashable.com

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