PIPA, if passed, will give U.S. corporations and the government the right to seek affirmative legal action with any website that they see as enabling copyright infringement whether of U.S. origin or not. Here is a breakdown of all that they will have the power to do:
- Force U.S. internet providers to block access to websites deemed as enablers of copyright infringement
- Seek legal action by suing search engines, blog sites, directories, or any site in general to have the black listed sites removed from their website
- Will be able to force advertising services on infringing websites, and those supporting of them, to remove them from their advertising accounts
- Companies will also have the power to sue any new websites that get started after this bill is passed, if they believe that they are not doing a good job of preventing infringement on your website
SOPA, if passed, will work together with PIPA. Here is a description of the power given to the government and private corporations:
- The U.S. Attorney General can now seek a court order that would force search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, servers, and payment processors from having any contact with allegedly infringing websites
- It will allow private corporations to create their own personal hit lists composed of websites they feel are breaking their copyright policies, ironically this doesn’t have any odd feelings of a legal mafia at all. These companies will be able to directly contact a website’s payment processors a notice to cut all off payment involvement with the targeted website. This payment processors and website of question will then have five days to act before it is simply 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
Some of the differences of the two bills are as follows:
#1: SOPA is a House bill, PIPA is a Senate bill.
The Senate tends to be older and more conservative than the House, meaning that it’s more likely to be completely clueless about the internet. That’s not good.
#2: PIPA has a greater chance of passing.
SOPA has gotten so much greif that it is temporarily off the table. PIPA, on the other hand, has been relatively ignored and is much farther along in the process.
#3: They are essentially the same “anti-piracy” bill, but with a few different provisions.
Both PIPA and SOPA focus on “foreign rogue websites” (e.g. the Pirate Bay, Wikileaks) that facilitate piracy. They both also establish systems for removing websites that the Department of Justice decides are “dedicated to infringing activities.”
PIPA does NOT have a provision that requires search engines to remove these “foreign infringing site(s)” from their websites. SOPA does and it is been highly criticized.
PIPA requires more court intervention to take down a site, that’s good, right? But it doesn’t have any provision that penalizes a copyright holder for making a false claim of infringement. In other words, a Big IP company can claim that a site is infringing, drag it through expensive litigation, be proven wrong, and the site can do nothing about its costs incurred in the process. On the other hand, SOPA does include a provision that penalizes copyright holders who do this “knowingly,” including making them liable for damages and legal costs.
Here is a chart on some more differences between the two bills:
As stated prior in what PIPA and SOPA are and what will they enable U.S. government agencies and private companies to do, the internet will become a hunt for any little bit of possible copyright violation. Of course the government loves blogs and bloggers, so it is only natural to think that they will receive a lot of special attention. These acts make the blog owners responsible for everything that is displayed on their site, including the comments of visitors.
For example, an article is published one day featuring a logo, or trademark of a corporation and that corporation doesn’t like that it is being put on display on the site. Now the author of this article could have used it as a teaching method, critique, praising good design, or anything you can think of, it doesn’t matter. With these acts being only direct enough to give an area for attack, and vague enough to manipulate and twist seemingly any possible way, any type of accusation can be made and found true. It is quite oblivious that none of the people on sites like YouTube have been given permission from record label executives to sing songs, and then proceed to post it on a video sharing site. The site the child will have posted the video on will be put under pressure to resolve this issue, or face their site being put on the list. This child, and his/her family, could also very well face legal action with either the site or the record label the song that was sung has copyrighted. I have only begun to scratch the surface with how these bills will affect our known internet. I could make a whole blog post on it alone.
Source(s):
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/how-sopa-pipa-can-affect-you/
