Internet Censorship Alex Lipp

The Bills in Congress PIPA — the Senate bill originally called the Protect IP Act. SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act — is a similar bill in the House.

PIPA Forces U.S. internet providers to block access to websites deemed enablers of copyright infringement Sues search engines, blog sites, or directories, to have the black listed sites removed from their website Forces advertising services on infringing websites to remove them from their advertising accounts Companies may sue new websites that get started after this bill is passed, if they believe that they are not doing a good job of preventing infringement

SOPA Forces search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, servers, and payment processors from having any contact with infringing websites Allow private corporations to create their own lists of websites they feel are breaking copyright policies. These companies can contact a website’s payment processors with a notice to cut off involvement with the targeted website. This payment processors and website of question will then have five days to act before it is taken down. Payment processors will have the power to cut off any website they work with, as long as they can provide a strong reason of why they believe this site is violating copyrights

Objections Internet entities such as Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr said the bills would force them to be online police and hold them responsible if users of their sites link to pirated content. The bills could require your Internet provider to block websites that are involved in digital file sharing. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing could be stopped from linking to them — antithetical to the ideal of an open Internet.

Congressional Response SOPA, the House bill, is on hold for now, and a hearing to discuss how it would work has been delayed. In the Senate, a vote on PIPA is still scheduled for Jan. 24, but it’s a procedural matter

Questions Do SOPA and PIPA infringe on our first amendment rights to freedom of speech? How could Congress revise these Bills to make them more effective? – Should they?