Stop Online Piracy Act

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

Despite copyright law 's prevalence in out everyday life, few are wary of the potential risks of its uncontested expansion. The law has been allowed to continuously expand with little or no opposition due to a lack of public awareness surrounding the issue. That was until the mufti-corporation sponsored bills SOPA and PIPA made headline news in 2011. These failed bills were an explicit attempt to increase the enforcement of copyright law over the internet.

Piracy has always been an issue for intellectual property owners. Piracy existed even as early as the 1500’s. In one famous instance, Renaissance artist Marcantonio Raimondi copied some of Albrecht Dürer’s works and claimed it was his own (Gambino, 2011). Politicians and content creators try to combat piracy with laws and lawsuits, but people engaging in piracy remain active and elusive. However, the development of the Internet has exacerbated this issue. Technological advancements, specifically the advancements in file sharing, have made the exchange of information extremely inexpensive, quick, and easy. People have direct access to unauthorized copies of millions of movies and songs due to programs such as Napster and Limewire. Thus, illegal

In the global market that we leave in companies are trying to find any and everyway that they can to get ahead in their respective markets. This most of the time brings out the most innovate thinkers that can come up with a way to keep it’s company on top of their market and sometimes we see that there are companies that like to take a short cut by using non legal and malicious methods. According to Lewis, (1985), Software piracy is the illicit copying of the operating instructions and applications programs, which make computers work, is a large and growing industry. The Pirate Bay is part of a European social and political movement that opposes copyrighted content and demands that music, videos, TV shows, and other digital content be free and unrestricted. In the words of the Pirate Party, “the Pirate Bay is a unique platform for distributing culture between regular people and independent artists, and that’s something we want to preserve.”

Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution. That’s what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures.(Tassi)

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

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

Traditional legal principles and processes are constantly challenged by the need to keep pace with copyright issues in particular piracy. The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015

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

On 23 February 2009, the Australian government announced the Inspector of Transport Security would ‘assess the current security arrangements covering Australian crews and ships’ and ‘investigate the impact, or potential impact, of piracy on Australian registered and international trading ships including their crews and passengers.

Imagine a group of police officers driving down the road, talking on radios, equipping gear, and getting ready to approach a house. Guns ready, they then walk up to the house and bang on the door, after a couple of seconds the door opens, and inside can be seen a man and his daughter. They seem shocked and afraid, and the police proceed to confiscate the little girl’s “Winnie the Pooh” laptop. All this happened because the little girl unknowingly downloaded a song off the internet. Before this happened though, the man was sent an offer to settle for the theft for a fine of 773$ and a signed non-disclosure agreement to keep him from talking[1]. This kind of overreaction towards internet crimes should not be acceptable, therefore laws regarding piracy should be reformed to make lawsuits less devastating towards those who pirated the digital goods. But many don’t know what the laws about piracy actually say, Quoted from wiseGEEK they are as follows:

Each state exercises its jurisdiction within its territory. Piracy is one crime when a state may exercise jurisdiction, because it is a crime that falls under the definition of jus cogens, considered being so critical to the international order that all nations must fight against it. The acts of piracy do not only have impacts on human life, but it affects the navigation on the seas, the environment and it has severe financial consequences. It is significant to stop the piracy attacks, but who have jurisdiction and rights to do it? The Somali government has been having trouble since 1991 and their priority is to handle the domestic economical and political situation. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t have the strength or capacity to handle the pirates alone. During many years pirates were seen as hostis humani generis – any enemy of all mankind, thus all states should fight them.

Censorship is often a very touchy subject in a country where the first amendment of the constitution is to allow freedom of speech. But back in 2012, two bills dubbed SOPA and PIPA, which stand for “Stop Online Piracy Act” and “Protect IP Act” respectively, were conjured up by congress in order to make it more difficult to distribute pirated content. So of course, this doesn’t seem so harmless since pirating content is already a federal offense. However, it goes alot deeper than that. Think about a superhero movie where the superhero is fighting the villain, and in the end, the superhero defeats the villain, but the whole city is destroyed. That is exactly what SOPA and PIPA would have done, except instead of destroying one city, they would

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.