SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill that if passed into law, would potentially criminalize the free download and upload of media files.
Some of its provisions include empowering the Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies to take legal action against perceived copyright violators. Punitive measures mulled in the bill include but are not restricted to, barring online payment clearing houses like PayPal from doing businesses with such sites, prohibit search engines from linking to such sites, ban online adverts on such sites, require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block such sites, and if all else fail, promise the malefactors who run and use such sites, five year sentence in federal prison.
According to the Library of Congress, this bill, which is also known as H.R. 3261, was introduced for deliberation to the floor of the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas with 31 sponsors. Proponents of the bill enthuse that it is long overdue. This is not the only bill of similar scope currently making the congressional circles. The PROTECT IP bill (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) was introduced by Democrat Patrick Leahy (VT) in May of 2011, and subsequently killed by fellow Democrat Senator Ron Wyden (OR). The Congressional Budget Office estimated that it would have cost the Federal Government $47 million to hire and train 22 special agents and 26 support staffers to enforce the PROTECT IP bill if it had become law. The PROTECT IP Act was a re-write of the COICA bill (Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act) that also failed to pass in 2010.
One of the major challenges to the bill by its opponents is that it will infringe upon the First Amendment of the US Constitution, especially the First Amendment.
On January 18 numerous websites in opposition of the bill conducted a temporary blackout, ceasing operations to raise awareness and demonstrate the hypothetical effects if the bill were to be passed into law. High traffic Websites including Reddit and Wikipedia suspended operations for almost the entirety of the day displaying a homepage that called awareness to the bill in order to educate the general public.
