The Stop Online Piracy Act H.R.3261 (and PIPA, its sister bill S.968) are proposed United States laws, please read them yourself. The basic goal is to censor all access to non-US websites involved with copyright violation. We feel there are some fundamental flaws with the proposed legislation.
Lawrence Tribe, a Harvard Constitutional Law Professor points out
- "Although SOPA's supporters have described the bill as directed at "foreign rogue websites," the definitions in the bill are not in fact limited to foreign sites or to sites engaged in egregious piracy."
- "To compound the problem, SOPA provides that a complaining party can file a notice alleging that it is harmed by the activities occurring on the site "or portion thereof." Conceivably, an entire website containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement."
- "In effect, the bill would impose the very monitoring obligation that existing law (in the form of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) expressly does not require. SOPA would undo the statutory framework that has created the foundation for many web-based businesses."
