Every teen’s worst nightmare occurred on Wednesday, January 18th: a day without Wikipedia. Why was no one able to use his or her favorite, albeit semi-unreliable source of information? Was there a problem with the servers? Was Wikipedia down for maintenance? No, Wikipedia was blacked out for the day in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act otherwise known as SOPA (not to be confused with soap, some people seem to think Americans are protesting hygiene).
Wikipedia was not the only website protesting SOPA on January 18th. Some other sites also chose to “blackout” completely, while still others chose to protest in different ways. Google and Mozilla Firefox, for example, chose to put black censor bars over their iconic, colorful banners. Other websites opposed to SOPA include, but are not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo, and AOL. Of course, websites on not the only ones opposed to SOPA. On Twitter, the day before the blackouts, SOPA was mentioned 106,500 times, but by one P.M. central time, SOPA had already hit 3.5 million mentions on Twitter. It is safe to assume that Americans definitely have their own opinions about SOPA.
So what is the big deal about SOPA that so many people and well known companies would be against it? SOPA is a bill that was introduced to Congress by Texas Representative Lamar Smith in October of 2011. SOPA deals with Rogue sites, that is, foreign-based websites that infringe upon American copyright laws. SOPA would force internet providers to serve court orders against foreign sites by preventing users from accessing the site. In order to do this, Internet providers would have to monitor web traffic and block sites that are even suspected of copyright infringement, meaning that a website containing multiple pages, only one of which was suspected of copyright infringement could be blocked completely.
SOPA does have it supporters though: the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and the US Chamber of Commerce. It only makes sense that they would support SOPA , they lose tons of money on piracy every year. Piracy puts 19 million American jobs at risk. In this economy, America cannot stand to lose even more jobs; the state of our economy’s recovery is fragile enough as it is.
Every American should be informed on SOPA. All statistics and facts stated in this article are from news.cnet.com. It is highly recommended that readers should check out the article: How SOPA Would Affect You: FAQ. To find out more about which companies participated in the strike, the guidelines of the strike, more statistics and screenshots, check out: sopastrike.com. Lastly, to read a full text version of the bill itself, visit: Thomas.loc.gov and search Stop Online Piracy Act. These sites would give anyone more than enough understanding of SOPA and allow them to judge the bill for him or herself.