What is SOPA and what is the SOPA blackout all about today 18th January 2012?
SOPA stands for STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT.
So what’s the deal and how does it affect us?
SOPA is a proposed bill that will crack down on piracy websites and copyright infringement.
Apparently their main targets are are overseas (namely European) sites that host/provide services to download copyright content.
Here’s a few examples on the sites in question:
Pirate Bay
Torrent Portal
Mini Nova
Bittorrent
Torrent Reactor
And membership News sites like:
Newzbin – UK site that’s already had their fair share of court battles in the UK.
Gingadaddy
Also, streaming sites such as:
BeeMP3′s – Where you can search, listen to, and download music!
And…
YOUTUBE! Yes, there it is, YouTube will be serious affected. There’s no way that can control the millions of users and uploads.
So now you have the basics, how would this affect us?
The bill is to stop access to any sites as shown in the examples above. And it also puts the site OPERATORS in jeopardy for content that USERS upload.
The bill requires every payment or advertising network operator to set up a process through which outside parties can notify the company that one of its customers is an “Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” Once a network gets a notification, it is required to cut off services to the target site within five days.
Read the full article here: CNN SOPA Explained
Wikipedia also has an explanation on their site. Stop Online Piracy Act
Three sites that I often use are against the bill. Namely Namecheap.com, Warriorforum.com and WORDPRESS.org. Three of the largest names in online marketing.
Warrior Forum have gone one step further than Namecheap and taken their entire site offline in support to stop the SOPA bill from being passed.
Warrior Forum state in BOLD: This bill is not the way to handle the problem. It is a disaster in the making.
In fact Warrior Forum’s concern and explanation is true in many ways:
How It Would Work
Here’s the simple version: If the Justice Department or any copyright holder accused a site of “encouraging or facilitating” piracy, the government could order that site removed from US-based search engines and ad networks, forbid payment processors from handling transactions for them, and require ISPs to block access to those sites by their customers.
Let’s consider how that might apply to this forum… There are currently over 335,000 pages on this site. If just one of those pages contained a single post promoting an illegal download, or one WSO seller has used graphics or code from a copyrighted product without permission, or we miss just one Chinese spam for counterfeit goods, we could be blocked.
Would it matter that we actively look for and delete those posts? Maybe, but only after the process had begun. And we’d probably never know about it until the block was in place.
The amount of time that it would take to correct such an unjustified blocking would cause permanent damage to any interactive site. Shifting the membership away from a destination for that long nearly guarantees the site would never recover.
Along with that, there is no requirement that payment processors re-accept a site that has been blocked this way. You know how these guys work: They don’t care if the site is eventually found innocent. They’d label it as “high risk,” and never deal with it again. And they’d probably start creating whole new categories to lock out, just to avoid the headaches.
“You let visitors post on your site? Sorry. We don’t accept interactive services in our network.”
And, unless the ISPs are working from a centralized and regularly updated database, it’s unlikely most of them would ever remove the blocks once they were in place.
Mistakes would almost certainly be fatal to the target sites. We’re talking about legitimate sites that provide real value for their visitors and real incomes for their operators and their families.
Here’s the video from Worpress.org explaining exactly what SOPA is all about:
How would it affect us?
Well, if the bill is passed; expect to see a LOT of sites you may regularly use SHUT DOWN, banned from ISP’s, search engines, and even fined.
It does mean that online piracy of our own digital work would be cut down to a minimum (but it will never be stopped).
Either way; if you run a “regular” website, stop your users from user being able to upload potentially copyrighted material, and operate ethically you should be safe if the bill is passed. It just feels like big brother is monitoring our every move and taking control of everything we do.
What’s your 5 cents?
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Comments (17)
Add a commentI was so upset when I saw the Warrior Forum was down!!!! I am going to give them a piece of my mind when them come back up. I paid $40 for a WSO and I want my money back!!!
That’s your takeaway from this, Tom? Seriously? Did you even read the article?
Thanks for the info, Mark!
Basically it´s wrong to go ahead with the SOPA -ACT, however youtube would not be so big and popular if they took copyright infringements seriously.
There´s a lot of illegal music, and movie clips on their servers- and they know it!
But if they were to take it down actively without just a DMCA disclaimer posted, their traffic would decrease-hence their advertising $ also.
That is why they oppose.
-Anders
Excellent article, thanks so much for sharing! Having the WF down really brought home how much I (and others!) rely upon that site for generating profit. Must diversify indeed…. (but also it was a great real life example of what might happen in the future).
Shared with me network, thanks!
The Warrior Forum looks awesome this way – they should keep it like that FOREVER (see, no smiley which means I’m not kidding).
Hell , yes.! MegaLOL etc.:-)
I like your style, Peter.
“out of order. be back in 2022″
Not a fan of WF Peter?
(see, smiley which means I’m kidding). I’m not an avid WF fan, but don’t dislike it either. It has it’s purposes.
I don’t agree with it and think it’s a terrible idea. It sounds ludicrous, especially after reading the explanations and the impact it will have online.
I have a friend who keeps telling me to read George Orwells book 1984, I have an idea of what the book is about and I think it’s relevant here.
I also think it’s a slippery slope. Allow this and it will be something else next.
@Peter that’s funny, although I know you’re being serious
Hey Mark,
Straight forward and to the point. Well done.
I’ve heard some solid arguments on why copyrights and patents should be dumped altogether. GMO crops would be a case in point. Gives corporations, in particular, too much power and misdirects capital for bad policy & bad behavior.
There have been a number of bands that have done a great job of giving away their music for free to build a fan base that was rabid enough to buy their premium recordings and printed materials at concerts and online.
Keeping things open source spreads freedom and capital – which really annoys the PTB (Powers That Be). It’s just a different marketing model that frees lawyers up to do something more useful.
Neil
Hi Mark,
At its core it is a government power grab. It limits freedom, will create even more massive bureaucracy and litigation and isn’t even needed.
There are already laws in place that allow a site owner to eliminate copyrited material on a case by case basis. Imagine you put up a review site for a product sold on Amazon and you use their image.
You could be shut down since you don’t hold the image’s copyright. The big lobby for this is the Hollywood entertainment industry, which as the video from wordpress pointed out, is nothing compared to the revenue generated by the internet.
The fight is about personal liberty vs government power. As I see it, if it passes, the internet can’t be the same and small business and individuals are hurt most.
I doubt if you tube would be ‘shut down’: they’ll simply shut down millions of accounts ‘for continued violations of terms of service’, and make it very difficult to upload anything.
Dude … you’re linking out to ‘em “bad” site. You’re gonna get your ass *banned*
Yeah! I better be careful what I write and post about
Big brother is watching!
The narrator on the wordpress.org video annoys me. It pains me to listen to him. It’s the nerdy high pitched voice. Will someone please give him a testosterone injection. Reminds me too much of Matt Cutts. ugh!!!
But he does make a good point.
Mark -
Nice to see you bring this to people’s attention
For the sake of your own business & personal freedom . . . and ours as well
My hope is that you & your “tribe” Andre’, Peter, Mark etc.
Will take the time to educate your followers
Deep down inside we know that as soon as “government{s}”
Step in to help the people or protect the people it most often if not !00%
Ends up a mess as well as diminishes our freedoms and our Right Of Choice.
We experience this in almost a measurable way on a DAILY basis in the U.S.
This is nothing more than another thinly disguised method for more control
My hope is that you and your fellow marketers / peers will continue to bring this to the forefront with a GREATER passion that you teach & share your I.M. skills & techniques
This is a sinister & nefarious ploy to diminish our quality of life in every aspect.
For all people world wide
Make a strong & passionate stand on this Mark
Good article Mark.
For anyone who doesn’t know how serious this is, If SOPA was enacted and I happened to post a link here to a site that was SUSPECTED of having copyrighted material. Then this blog could be closed down and Marks paypal account frozen.
Take that 1 step further If i have a site in competition with Mark, the warriorforum….or in fact anyone, I could get some of my evil minions to post the links on his site ..maybe disguised at trackbacks images or something else… then I could report him…
Scary thought eh?
Just more Government control and a further move to gradually control every aspect of our lives.
here’s a link to another good video explaining SOPA – http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html