Let’s Wait and See About SOPA
Ever since its introduction, the Stopping Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has caused a lot of uproar among the Internet community. The SOPA was designed to increase Internet security and help protect copyrighted content from being stolen on the Internet. Many who have read the bill, however, say that it goes far beyond that. The majority consensus of the Internet community is that it is too harsh and will greatly restrict or even stop the creative, free use of the Internet.
According to Dory Carr-Harris on PSFK, experts are worried that the SOPA will ruin the Domain Name System (DNS), a backbone of the Internet that allows computers all over the world to access websites. The problem with blocking domain names is that many thousands of websites exist under one domain name.
Recently, the Internet community decided to boycott GoDaddy for just that reason, and the Internet users won. GoDaddy pulled their support of the bill because of the boycott and said “GoDaddy will support [SOPA] when and if the Internet community supports it.” Anyone else who has given his or her support to the SOPA could be in trouble.
This amazing retraction could be the beginning of a major onslaught from the Internet community. Now that they have realized the extent of their power, it would not be surprising to see even more successful boycotts taking place soon because of SOPA and PIPA (Protect-IP Act).
At the first hearing in the House of Representatives, nothing was decided for sure and the Internet community made itself heard afterwards. There was uproar over who the speakers were and the Representatives’ seeming failure to understand anything about the bill itself. Rep. Jason Chaffetz asked his colleagues to “bring in the nerds” in order to satisfy the public’s call for expert testimony on the bill.
This time, they have. A new hearing has been set in the House of Representatives for the SOPA, which will address many of the issues that the Internet community has with this bill. Seven prominent Internet-savvy experts will speak at the hearing in the House and perhaps shed some light for the Representatives on the bill and the restrictions it will bring to the Internet.
There is even a WhiteHouse.gov petition for President Obama to veto both of the bills. Each of the individual petitions has garnered many signatures and the petitioners are awaiting the President’s response about his official position.
Whether or not the SOPA and PIPA will be made into laws remains to be seen, but people on both sides of the issue are actually working for the same goal – better Internet security. No one wants their copyrighted content stolen, and everyone wants to know that what they put online is secure. It remains to be seen if these bills will resolve these security issues or not.
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Filed under: david milman, Internet, Internet Security, rescuecom, security