Corey Adams

Business Manager

    Newly created bills SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) have many avid internet users in distress. These two bills both are almost identical other than the House bill including a provision that would make it illegal to stream unauthorized copyrighted content.  The proposed law that would grant the US government and certain copyright holders special privileges to curb access to websites that are deemed inappropriate, illegal, or infringing was put on hold by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The bill was widely opposed among people across the US, along with people from many other countries who rely on or enjoy America’s filter-free internet use. Many websites, like Wikipedia, showed their disapproval of the bill by closing their websites temporarily. Their attempts to attract attention to the bills worked. Primarily, Wikipedia’s strong effort to show the idiocy of the bill while redirecting its viewers to their individual state representatives helped delay and perhaps derail the bill for good. Missouri Senator Roy Blunt voiced his opinion about the bill’s current flaws, “We can find a solution that will protect lawful content. But this bill is flawed & that’s why I’m withdrawing my support.”

    Dara Issa, a California representative and advocate of SOPA and PIPA, says the new bill would provide a more profitable internet for American artists and innovators, while protecting millions of people from its openness and liberal content that may be seen as inappropriate. But, for the time being, SOPA and PIPA have been stalled until the bill is revised.

    However, with battle over these two bills at a stalemate, a new bill introduced as OPEN would provide special access to the International Trade Commission, as opposed to the Justice Department. OPEN target foreign-based websites and would only interfere with companies that purposely violate and infringe on terms of use and Intellectual Property (IP) rights. Unlike the SOPA and PIPA acts, OPEN is supported by many high profile websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others. OPEN is more acceptable to those websites because it focuses on informing viewers about the content rather than restricting the content.  SOPA and PIPA are too broad and actually affect the content of sites like Facebook, Wikipedia and others.