SOPA and PIPA

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA)

This bills represented in the ‘United States House of Representatives’ on 26 oct 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith with 12 co-sponsors would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright materials. This bill makes the online advertisers and payment providers to suspend the business conduct with the foreign website that is found violating the Federal Criminal Intellectual Property Law.

Originally casted for the foreign website, SOPA and PIPA allows US Government to take action against foreign sites (i.e., sites that do not fall under U.S. jurisdiction) if the owner or operator of such Internet site is facilitating the commission of copyright infringement. The Right holder can demand the funding to be cut off from that site and the search link of that site to be removed from the search engine results. He will also has the rights to order Service Providers to block the Domain names of the penal sites however the IP address of that site will still be reachable. Any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement would be liable for damages.

Ex: If any Right Holder chooses to take action against a site (either against the operator, if they are subject to U.S. jurisdiction, or against the site itself if no one under U.S. jurisdiction can be found), then a subsequent court order would require the following:

• Internet service providers will be required to block your access to the site within five days.
• Search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) will be forced to remove all references to the offending sites from their indexes.
• Ad providers (Google AdSense, Federated Media, etc.) will be required to stop providing ad service to the site.
• Payment providers (PayPal, Visa, etc.) will be required to terminate service to the site.

The bills are commonly associated with media piracy, but may also apply to counterfeit consumer goods and medication. The bill could make some proxy servers and the Tor project illegal and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) warned that websites Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seemed likely to shut down if the bill becomes law.

The second section covers penalties for streaming video and for selling counterfeit drugs, military materials or consumer goods. The bill would expand penalties to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content and other intellectual property offenses. The bill would criminalize unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months.

The bill also includes many supporters like the Motion Picture Association of America, pharmaceuticals makers, media businesses and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They say it protects the intellectual-property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites.