SOPA ( Stop Online Piracy Act)  is a bill has the potential to negatively change the world of internet because it will block us from using our everyday websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, eBay, Reddit and many others and puts the whole  power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor these sites.

What is SOPA?

     SOPA is coming to try to stop the online piracy just because the entertainment industry doesn’t agree to be so many people downloading their products without their permission.With SOPA approved these companies can block the domain names of the websites which are doing any kind of copyright encouragement.

     We don’t know if you understand but this can be a more big issue than you think because any of the articles that you write on your websites or any kind of content that can be interpreted as piracy-friendly can block your domain.One thing that they can’t block is your numeric IP address so basically this bill is not made to stop the piracy as most of the Internet users think but is made to censor any website which provides or seems capable of providing any kind of pirated content.

In this area we can include big websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others because for any of these websites can be brought a claim against it if is possible to post pirated content on them.Even if you are posting an image on Facebook you can be marked as piracy friendly.

Watch the video below to understand better what is SOPA and what negative effects can have:

Who is against SOPA?

     Almost all of the major tech corporations like: Facebook, Google, Reddit , AOL, Tumblr, eBay/PayPal, Kaspersky, Github, Foursquare, Quora, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, Scribd, Square and many others.Besides these corporations we all should be against SOPA.

We can add here a major GOP presidential candidate in the name of Rep. Michelle Bachmann and many others like:
Rep. Darrell Issa - chairman on Oversight and Government reform and also on the House Judiciary Committee. He is the most prominent opponent and frequently tweets about SOPA/PIPA on his Twitter account.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren - member House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz - member subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee.
Rep. Jared Polis - the new "champion of the Internet." Polis is the Judiciary Committee member who made several proposed changes to SOPA to make a court order necessary to take down a website.
Rep. Mike Honda - aligned himself with Bachmann on SOPA and has been involved in technology legislation for more than a decade.

Who Supports SOPA?

Rep. Lamar Smith - chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: Smith's office wrote the bill and he is the primary sponsor.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte - chairman of the subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee.
Rep. Mel Watts - member of the subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee. Also you should know that he is the congressman that made the comments about not understanding how the Internet works.
Rep. Howard Berman - member subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee.

In addition there are also some associations and organizations which are supporting SOPA. Most of Hollywood and its various labor organizations, the Recording Industry Association of America, House Judiciary, Most Picture Association of America, CBS, Warner Music and Sony are some of these organizations.

Security Implications and Requirements:

      One of the security-related implications interacts with the domain name system and a set of security improvements known as DNSSEC which are made to promote end-to-end encryption of domain names and SOPA would have a negative effect on promoting DNSSEC.

Also Sandia National Laboratories, part of the U.S. Department of Energy thinks that SOPA will negatively impact U.S. and Internet functionality  and global cybersecurity.

What will SOPA require Internet providers to do?
      This law could require Internet providers to monitor all of their customers traffic and then block any of the websites suspected of copyright infringement.

These requirements will be different and will depend on what the removal order is saying to be done an sometimes can include even blocking the IP address.

What you can do about that:

     Currently Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google, Yahoo, Reddit, AOL, Kickstarter, Mozilla, eBay, Zynga, and a lot of other websites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA and if you want to do the same thing then there are a few things that you can do:

1)  Call your congressperson or send him a letter by visiting the American Censorship Day web site and tell him that you don’t agree with this bill.

2)  Write articles about why we should oppose SOPA and publish them on your websites/blogs or even on your social media accounts, send emails to your friends and family and make them understand why they should act and try to make this bill rejected.

     There are many points in this law that are very ambiguous and this is why we should act now and try to prevent all the harm that SOPA can do to our business and our daily life because once SOPA is approved we’ll see that many of our preferred websites are not working anymore for us.