The Chilling Effect of SOPA and PIPA: Why should you care?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 11:33AM You may have seen Google today or read about Wikipedia and other websites going dark in protest of SOPA and PIPA. First of all, what are SOPA and PIPA? SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was introduced in Congress last October. PIPA, Protect IP Act, is SOPA’s counterpart in the U.S. Senate.
At its simplest, the two bills are intended to give intellectual property owners (think movies and music) the right to completely eliminate foreign websites against whom they believe they have a copyright claim. What does it mean to completely eliminate? According to a recent Gizmodo story, “[they] could demand Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and—most dangerously—that the site's ISP prevent people from even going there.”
Scary. But what’s worse is that any kind of legal due process is completely missing from the two bills. This means that any content provider may proactively shut down a site it thinks violates a copyright. And that CAN INCLUDE YOUR OWN, PERSONAL Facebook profile, or photo gallery or Twitter account. Facebook and Twitter would be legally required to remove your updates if there is a question of copyright infringement.
SOPA and PIPA are “meant” for foreign websites. But the opportunity for abuse – at both the brand and personal levels – is immense. A chilling effect may be the least of our worries.
(Betsy Parkins)

