A Brief Introduction On SOPA & PIPA - PART 1 - Chintan Gurjar

What is SOPA and PIPA ?
SOPA is known as Stop Online Piracy Act. Its house bill number is 3261.Also known as H.R 3261.
PIPA is known as Protect IP act. Its Senate bill number is 968. Also known as s.968.

Why Some People Hate It?
The main reason behind hatins SOPA and PIPA is this. This bill has an ability to make the owners responsible and punishable for his/her clients who are interacting with their websites. It is very easy to manipulate and abuse the language of these bills. The result of this is very simple. Many websites will be served limited or might be blocked by government.

When these bills came out there were some minor corrections has been done in the document of these bills. Some of are there mentioned here. First change is like this. Government can't censor most things before their publication. It can be censored by government only after the publication. Secondly, The major change which is also applicable to the you tube is like this. The internet is already in compliance with doctrine. To understand this lets take an example. You tube cant be pre-censor absolutely all copyright material,but it can remove the vidoes which exploits the laws of SOPA one by one after they are posted. This change was done by the request of DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).

As per the bill sponsors's view This legislation primarily targets the foreign websites. How ever PIPA and SOPA separate sites by domain name themselves. Domestic domain names are like .COM .ORG .US and foreign names are like .IT .LY etc. But as per this definition it may possible that many websites will be mis labeled. Exmple - Actual Domestic Sites - redd.it, bit.ly Actual foreign sites - wikileaks.org thepiratebay.org

This is one type of problematic system. No one can do within it. Even many high level websites such as image hosting and server distribution websites have their non-domestic as well as domestic names within it.


Major Difference Between The SOPA & PIPA.
SOPA : - website is U.S directed. Rule: The owner or the operator of his or her website committing or the facilatinig the commission of criminal violations.That criminal violations comes under the act 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, 2320. The most of the sections primary deals with the copyright . In short you copy, you are blocked.

PIPA :-  The site is used or designed by its operator, which is facilating the activities of copyright act that, disregards an agreement or a right.

Who Has The Real Powers ?
Most of the power comes under the Attorney General. He or she has an ability and authority to influence the court to take an action against the website which is breaking the laws of SOPA and PIPA.


Who are the real players of in this ?
Payment network provider such as paypal. The service that handles the payment transactions. Search Engine. A service of providing the links of a user query or selection. In this reddit,digg,live blogs, and link shortners comes under this definition. The service provider which host a non authorized DNS server.

To Be Continued ...

Author : Chintan Gurjar