SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)
There has been so much buzz about SOPA and PIPA after Megaupload takedown by FBI. So, it now becomes important to know the villains.
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act):
SOPA's motto: "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes."
SOPA is an anti-piracy bill introduced to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.
Copyright holders say the bills will help curb online piracy that they claim costs them billions of dollars a year.
With SOPA passed, it will be possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that encourage copyright infringement. But blocking domain names won't stop piracy much as blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address.
The other measure taken by SOPA is the right to hold company's resources of funding. So, whether your source of income is from Google or Paypal or Amazon or any other service, it will be terminated by SOPA's bill.
SOPA has been delayed for now. It's in the hand of US Senators and Congressman to decide about the bill. The White House, for now has delayed the issue for next month.
President Barack Obama is not in support of the bill. He is in favor of Internet freedom and wants to come out with a better solution. He will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression and increases cybersecurity risk.
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act):
SOPA's motto: "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes."
SOPA is an anti-piracy bill introduced to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.
Copyright holders say the bills will help curb online piracy that they claim costs them billions of dollars a year.
With SOPA passed, it will be possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that encourage copyright infringement. But blocking domain names won't stop piracy much as blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address.
The other measure taken by SOPA is the right to hold company's resources of funding. So, whether your source of income is from Google or Paypal or Amazon or any other service, it will be terminated by SOPA's bill.
SOPA has been delayed for now. It's in the hand of US Senators and Congressman to decide about the bill. The White House, for now has delayed the issue for next month.
President Barack Obama is not in support of the bill. He is in favor of Internet freedom and wants to come out with a better solution. He will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression and increases cybersecurity risk.
Why was Megaupload the first victim of FBI, not others?
This is an obvious question which may have struck every user now and then, why megaupload, why not Filesonic or Hotfile or Rapidshare. Following are the worth noting reasons:
Megaupload was not following the DMCA policies strictly in comparison with other File hosting companies. Filesonic and Fileserve, for example, have a separate panel of staffs who keep a regular watch on the uploaded content in order to remove the copyrighted content as soon as possible.
The online streaming of Megaupload link videos was easy to download with the help of various download managers like IDM. So, now the copyrighted content for which payment was made for online streaming only was readily available offline via download.
Megaupload offered a Megakey through which anyone can download anything as a premium member free of cost in return to Ads shown by Megaupload. This exchange of Ads for premium download encouraged copyrighted content download.
Some people think the megaupload takedown was a conspiracy, with the concept of MegaBox to be launched soon. MegaBox was going to be a cloud based music store which offered the artists (the copyright content owners) to make better money than they would get with any record label. They planned on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free.
This is an obvious question which may have struck every user now and then, why megaupload, why not Filesonic or Hotfile or Rapidshare. Following are the worth noting reasons:
Megaupload was not following the DMCA policies strictly in comparison with other File hosting companies. Filesonic and Fileserve, for example, have a separate panel of staffs who keep a regular watch on the uploaded content in order to remove the copyrighted content as soon as possible.
The online streaming of Megaupload link videos was easy to download with the help of various download managers like IDM. So, now the copyrighted content for which payment was made for online streaming only was readily available offline via download.
Megaupload offered a Megakey through which anyone can download anything as a premium member free of cost in return to Ads shown by Megaupload. This exchange of Ads for premium download encouraged copyrighted content download.
Some people think the megaupload takedown was a conspiracy, with the concept of MegaBox to be launched soon. MegaBox was going to be a cloud based music store which offered the artists (the copyright content owners) to make better money than they would get with any record label. They planned on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free.
List of major companies opposing SOPA and the reason behind their opposition
SOPA is being opposed by a wide array of groups ranging from a normal computer user to file hosting companies with back-up from the following major companies:
GOOGLE
WIKIPEDIA
FACEBOOK
YOUTUBE
MICROSOFT
TWITTER
ZYNGA
AOL
eBAY
KASPERSKY
MOZILLA
PAYPAL
TECHCRUNCH
YAHOO
ESET
Above companies have made their contribution as an Anti-SOPA member in one way or the other.
The main intention of SOPA is to fight against pirating sites and block websites containing pirated material.
Sites like Youtube, Wikipedia, Facebook host copy righted material. Google on the other hand maintains triplets of everything uploaded to internet on their servers. The uploaded files contain copyrighted material too. Google also helps in searching out links of copy righted material.
Facebook and Twitter is responsible for sharing of copyrighted links on their site.
Paypal will be restricted in having business relations with blocked websites affecting their economy. No company will be allowed to show their ads on sites not following SOPA's terms and conditions.
With SOPA's bill passed, it will be a challenging job for the above companies to monitor their database 24/7 and remove the copyrighted content.
SOPA is being opposed by a wide array of groups ranging from a normal computer user to file hosting companies with back-up from the following major companies:
WIKIPEDIA
YOUTUBE
MICROSOFT
ZYNGA
AOL
eBAY
KASPERSKY
MOZILLA
PAYPAL
TECHCRUNCH
YAHOO
ESET
Above companies have made their contribution as an Anti-SOPA member in one way or the other.
The main intention of SOPA is to fight against pirating sites and block websites containing pirated material.
Sites like Youtube, Wikipedia, Facebook host copy righted material. Google on the other hand maintains triplets of everything uploaded to internet on their servers. The uploaded files contain copyrighted material too. Google also helps in searching out links of copy righted material.
Facebook and Twitter is responsible for sharing of copyrighted links on their site.
Paypal will be restricted in having business relations with blocked websites affecting their economy. No company will be allowed to show their ads on sites not following SOPA's terms and conditions.
With SOPA's bill passed, it will be a challenging job for the above companies to monitor their database 24/7 and remove the copyrighted content.
SOPA是《禁止网络盗版法案》（Stop Online Piracy Act）的缩写。该法案目前正在美国国会审议，引起了大量争议。
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyhDaPjpuL0[/youtube]