SOPA Chill Out

In a recent uproar, popular websites all over, such as Google and Facebook, participated in a blackout protest against the SOPA and PIPA Acts, which were in debate with the senate. The PIPA Act is designed to stop piracy, “with particular emphasis on illegal copies of films and other forms of media hosted on foreign servers” (BBC sopa and pipa 2012). The PIPA act grants the United States government, along with other right holders, the permission to request a court order against any website “enabling or facilitating" piracy. This court order potentially could have a whole website shut down “[making] them "disappear" from the internet” (BBC:sopa and pipa 2012). In addition, the SOPA Act would require all search-engines to remove infringing websites from their search results (BBC: sopa and pipa 2012). Although both Acts could prevent piracy rates from increasing, they also threaten to change the structure of the internet and potentially violate the constitutional right: Freedom of Speech.
Background:
Both the SOPA and PIPA Act are closely related to the censorship acts implanted in Iran and China, and more recently Spain (BBC: Sopa and Pipa 2012). In China, “the government has put a lot of resources into controlling and censoring the internet content available to its citizens.” Everything from online games to politically sensitive sites are censored and decided whether it should be made available to the public (S. Chen 2011). In China, western social networks such as Facebook are sometimes blocked (S. Chen 2011). In addition to China, Iran (is) also another country where internet censorship has gone into effect. According to an article published in the Huffington post, “the latest Internet blockade [in Iran] affected the most common form of secure connections, including all encrypted international websites outside of Iran that depend on the