Information Freedom: the Ethical Implications of Sopa

In a sense, the bills would create an internet blacklist. These bills did not pass through congress due to mass protest by people. Multiple sites such as Google and Wikipedia had a day of ‘black out’ in order to raise public awareness of these bills, which in turn lead to the protests that prevented these bills from passing. Though the American people were successful in preventing those bills, there were others that were signed without the majority of the public knowing. An example of such a bill is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). ACTA has a very strict definition of copyright infringement, would require ISPs to monitor all your data traffic, force ISP to remove service from people who infringe copyrights (Solon). This act was approved by congress but was eventually denied by the UN. Whether or not ACTA will still be enforced in the United States is highly doubtful, but it may lead to further legislature advocating internet restriction. Such legislature could be the Trans-Pacific Trade Pact (TPP). With similar writing as ACTA and other internet censorship bills, however, a difference is that it includes pacific countries such as Japan, Mexico, and Australia. While the internet did extended the American peoples

Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left

I understand and agree with your post. Taking away the protection offered by the Copyrights Act will increase the financial insecurity for the new artist and lower the creation of new material. This is the reason I also completely agree with the court case ruling in against LimeWire

One of the most controversial policies to pass legislation within the United States congress with the approval of our president at the time, George W. Bush, was the USA PATRIOT Act. The USA PATRIOT Act is actually a acronym for the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. This Act reduced the restrictions, which now allowed the law the power to search various electronic communications records as well as medical and financial records. It also enabled fewer restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering, broadened the immigration enforcement laws to allow them to more easily detain and deport immigrants suspected of involvement with

On sunny spring morning in Aurora , Colorado, I blissfully awoke without any threats to my personal liberties or freedoms. I went to school, same as any other day, and started my classes. Then after lunch, I got to use a laptop for a group project in my history class. However, as a boy without much interest in the electoral college, I was not very motivated to actually work on the project. Instead I went to the news section on Google and I discovered SOPA. SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was a United States congressional bill that had the potential to change the internet forever. Stopping online piracy is a positive and righteous name but SOPA is far from righteous. SOPA would have given the power to the United States government and Internet

While the United States has very little government regulation over the Internet compared to other countries, such as china, the United States government has made it a requirement for schools and libraries to use an intermediary software to filter the content available to minors. While these intermediaries restrict access to websites regarding child pornography, which is not a protection of the first amendment, there is also legislation pending to restrict access to social networking websites, which are considered protected by the First Amendment (Kreimer 22). White refers to the case United States v. American Library Association, which refers to the requirement of a software on computers prohibiting children from viewing anything that is harmful to them, such as pornography. The court ruled, adults still have the ability to view such sites if they ask a library official to remove the website from the blocked list, and therefore does not go against First Amendment liberties. However, the judge also said, “until a blocked site or group of sites is unblocked, a patron is unlikely to know what is being hidden and therefore whether there is any point in asking for the filter to be removed” (White 2009). White believed due to this statement alone, the individual’s rights of speech have been restrained prior to their knowledge (White 2009).

After the disclosures by Edward Snowden turned a critical eye to the NSA many people questioned the legality of the acts. The NSA claimed that their work was legal and had prevented many terrorist plots. However, evidence of only four plots was ever found. Even if the acts were founded in law, they still angered large numbers of citizens. Many citizens do not care if the spying is legal, believing that it is morally wrong. Government surveillance organizations have grown to be extremely powerful and are capable of accessing large swaths of personal information; these abilities intrude into the private lives of citizens and need to be curtailed.

I’m afraid that the issues that had to do with the rights for creators of content (authors of music, books, papers, etc.) to be able to profit from their work without being deprived of their livelihoods due to piracy, was confounded due to the ignorance of law makers about the nature of the Internet (the free flow of ideas, the ability to collaborate with people from all over the world and engage in thoughtful discourse and debate, etc.). Further, the influence of money and pressure being brought upon the government to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) by very wealthy and influential organizations (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_SOPA_and_PIPA ) created undue pressure to get Congress to act without thoughtful investigation into the

SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA: though different, these bills were all presented with a similar goal in mind. These bills were intended to stop the digital copyright infringement of American intellectual properties, mainly in foreign countries, but the overly vague wording in the bills made it hard to decipher their real intentions (Yu). For a multitude of reasons, these bills were staunchly protested not only by American citizens, but they also received protest from numerous international groups (York). Though some may argue that SOPA, PIPA, or CISPA may have had some value, they did not have the intended result of ending digital theft, but rather invigorated a retaliating movement. The main

1. Blogs and bloggers for instance may receive a lot of special attention. SOPA makes it the blog owner’s responsibility for everything that is displayed on their site, including the comments of their visitors.

One of the main reasons for the failure of SOPA is the huge amount of public opposition fueled by campaigns and petitions by enormous and well-known companies like Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter. Millions of Americans protested the bill through social media and public demonstrations. The opposition is fueled by the fact that the bill personally affects all kinds of internet users by

In this scenario, if the United States Government were to mandate a similar set of restriction and censorship requirements on Google searches, and other search engines, the legal issue that would arise through this new government policy is the breaking of H.R.491 - Global Online Freedom Act of 2013. The Global Online Freedom Act of 2013 was created:

The questions of law before the court were about LimeWire’s role. Did their users infringe copyrights? Had it induced users to infringe?

In 2011, several people started a “Don’t Filter Me project.” They wanted to remove the web filters on the school computers that blocked several educational sites. They filed lawsuits and demanded that they unblock these sites and take away the web filters. Also another group of people petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the Communications Decency Act in Reno v. ACLU in 1997. As a result, the court granted the “highest level of First Amendment protection to the internet.” Also in 2004, the Supreme Court “announced that it will not hear government’s appeal of a ban on the Child Online Protection Act.” They thought of this as a violation of the First Amendment (Internet Censorship 1).

Producers of musical content cannot undo the adverse effects that piracy has had on the industry. Because of the internet and the way individuals have manipulated it to obtain music, many people are unwilling to change their habits. Here lies the issue between the producer and the consumer. Acts like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) work against the incentive of many consumers by telling them that they cannot do what maximizes their utility. Producers are thus working against the likings of the consumer. This is wrong.