Saturday, March 29, 2014

SOPA Vote Coming Up While House Downloads Unlawful Material

By Cornelius Nunev


Illegally obtained products are extensively available online. The SOPA bill is intended to make these materials less obtainable, a fact that users of the Congressional web connection seem to be reacting to by downloading more unlawful content.

What to learn about SOPA

Copyright holders would really appreciate it if the Stop Online Piracy Act, or H.R. 3261, was passed. Introduced with the Shield IP Act, the bill would let individuals file copyright infringement claims. This would block search engines from showing the disputed content and would block online payment processors from working with the issue.

The bill would make it so internet services attempting to enforce copyright would not be responsible from any damages. This might entirely reform the internet and, as some have pointed out, could violate First Amendment free speech protections.

Pot calling the kettle black

Torrent freak used You Have Downloaded to search the House of Representatives' download history. You Have Downloaded searches IP addresses to select out download history, although it only gets about 20 percent of torrent downloads. In that search, Torrent freak found that there have been over 800 pieces of unlawful content downloaded. This includes self-help books such as "Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High," and "How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You need." It also involved hardcore pornography, TV shows and films.

Fewer members support SOPA

The vote on SOPA has been postponed until at least after Congress returns after the first of the year. While Congress is out of session, several of the companies and organizations that have supported the passage of SOPA have been targeted by opponents. The most noticeable example of this is the domain-registration service GoDaddy, which originally supported the bill. It faced a large consumer backlash and drain of consumers to other services. GoDaddy has now come out strongly against SOPA, citing customer feedback.




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