The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Essay

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

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.”

The pervasive nature of the Internet has made the copying of music and software exceptionally easy, fast and for the most part, undetectable. The ubiquity of the Internet and the speed at which music and software can be copied is also changing the sociological and legal aspects of computing as well (De George, 2006). For the first time the availability of technology is driving a level of expertise with computer users globally that give them the opportunity to capture, distribute, duplicate and even re-publish massive amounts of intellectual property that isn't theirs (Wilson, 2007). This is forcing the issue of copyright infringement and the protection of intellectual property at a global scale. In so doing, this dynamics is also re-ordering ethics surrounding all forms of digital content as well.

Following this, all payment providers, such as PayPal, would be forced to block payments to the website. Finally, they would order ad services to stop placing their ads on the prosecuted website (Summary). The aforementioned companies were required to respond and take these actions within five days of being notified of the website’s malicious activity. If they failed to do so, the copyright holder would take these companies to court on accusations of disregarding the claims of copyright infringement (Summary). The strangest part about all of this is that the bill would take no action directly against the accused website, but would have only cut off access to it (Summary). This marks a primary distinction between PIPA and SOPA, which are often presented as equivalent bills. For one, PIPA does not force search engines to remove a website accused of hosting copyrighted content from their indexes, which is one of the most debated points of SOPA. It also has provisions that require greater court intervention, however it does not contain any sort of penalty for a copyright holder who goes after an innocent site, where as SOPA has provisions in place for such an occurrence (Couts).

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

For many years illegal file sharing and music swapping has been going on. Two very popular cases are the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster case and the A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster case. Both cases differ in many ways however they also have similarities. A lot of music and other sorts of entertainment are being distributed for free all over the internet. What some people do not think of are the consequences that will be faced if they get caught. Not only is the distributor at risk for getting caught but those of us that download the software illegally can be charged.

The Internet has incurred a tremendous amount of growth and opportunity for the country as well as the world; elevating communication, information, and commerce to a new level. With all this unprecedented innovation, the Internet has also brought controversy that challenges the very foundation of rights that countries like the United States were founded on. With countless websites containing unregulated and objectively offensive content, and the public having an ease of access to this content will result in severe damages to the development of the youth if no censorship is put in place for them to view this content. Additionally, markets are being exploited by piracy which has resulted in billions of dollars being lost by the domestic economy

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was a bill proposed in the House of Representatives that aimed to tackle the growing problem of online piracy and copyright infringement. It targets foreign-based websites that contain any form of unauthorized copyright-infringing material such as movies or music by giving content-creators the right to stop any US businesses from providing payment services, advertising, or even dealing with prosecuted websites; essentially blacklisting and hiding these websites to any US visitors. The bill is split into two main sections: “Combating Online Piracy”, which provides tools for rights holders to protect their content, and “Additional Enhancements to Combat Intellectual Property Theft.”, which criminal law which as applies to intellectual property rights and increases punishments for leaking government information. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was not enacted because of very strong opposing public opinion, its highly broad and unconstitutional policies that restricted speech, and presidential leadership against the bill.

The Internet is unquestionably having a profound impact on many aspects of social, culture, economic, and legal systems throughout the world, moreover, enabling significant advances in global communication technologies, that make it more possible to contemplate the development of a more complex global information society. Such a global society offers many benefits to humankind, but incorporating regulation to enable and promote these information societies present challenges. However, such challenges create difficult questions for those making legal decisions: Do real world laws apply to virtual world problems? Can the laws adapt to regulate such activities? Are existing laws outdated and inadequate? Will new laws be required to suite Internet activities and other information technology developments?

While U.S. take-down notification receivers can use fair use provision to stand up for themselves, Chinese copyright owners can file take down notifications as long as they have “(1) Name, contact information and address of the owner; (2) The names of the infringed works, performance and audio-visual products that are required to be deleted or the names of the web addresses whose link is required to be cut off; and (3) The preliminary certification materials on infringement.” Part I of this paper illustrates how U.S. and Chinese law making body solve the problem of copyright owners abusing the right to file take down notifications. In this part, the problem now existing in the Internet IP world will be unveiled. As to how each different country is dealing the problem,

To better understand the act, one needs to first examine what “SOPA” is and means. First and foremost, SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act. This act is essentially an extension of another bill that was sent through shortly before it. The name of this bill is the PROTECT IP act, which stands for Protecting Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property. Both these names are essentially very fancy names for an anti-theft law to protect the intellectual property of movie, music and other industries alike. From this, the logical questions one would come to is; what does this bill do? What is beneficial about it? What is harmful about it? How would it effect me and my daily

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

Identify and discuss these copyright challenges in the modern digital economy using examples from case law.

Such policy seems to be working with plagiarism at e.g. Universities, but in term of intellectual property the intangible aspect of the product makes it more difficult to control. Therefore stopping online piracy is easier said than done, as it would require enormous human resources from a government to track down illegal websites and taking a legal action against them leading to the closure. One case study worth following regarding this issue was on the major streaming website TV SHACK.net has been seized many times by the US government and it kept changing the domain addresses to overseas addresses as .co or .bz. The owner, 23 year old student Richard O’Dwyer from Sheffield has been charged with copyright infringement and the US Justice Department has been seeking to extradite him from the UK since May 2011 – BBC reports. Streaming itself is a grey area in many countries, i.e. Germany, where it is not perceived as downloading but has been sourced using illegal means. Compared with the legal issues and the fact that the content was stored on foreign servers the law enforcement was extremely difficult, but now it has been set an example worldwide of tackling with piracy. On entering the internet address now a video clip displays which in a humoristic educated people on what piracy is and how much a “free” movie really cost. Such attempt is one of the suggested ways in dealing with piracy through

There has been extensive growth in the number of people accessing the Internet. For this reason, the Internet has become a necessity to the American population, shown in the estimated 50 million users on-line in the U.S. The ease of Internet access has increased along with the advances in technology. Along with price and availability, changes in the web and web browsers have allowed pirates to offer illegal copies of software that can be downloaded by even the most uneducated user. Most Internet piracy is accomplished in the home or the office, with very little risk of being caught. The very nature of the Internet requires the user to rely on will power and morality to resist temptation to