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SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a law of the United States proposed in 2011 to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Proposals include barring advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with allegedly infringing websites, barring search engines from linking to the sites, and requiring Internet service providers (ISP) to block access to the sites. The bill would criminalize the streaming of such content, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
User-content websites such as YouTube, but not only, would be greatly affected, and concern has been expressed that they may be shut down if the bill becomes law. Opponents state the legislation would enable law enforcement to remove an entire internet domain due to something posted on a single blog, arguing that an entire online community could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, the copyright owners are required to request the site to remove the infringing material within a certain amount of time. SOPA would bypass this "safe harbor" provision by placing the responsibility for detecting and policing infringement onto the site itself.
This is serious problem Freedom of speech and Freedom of information: The president Obama, mentioned on the Texas Insider: "will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression".
On October 28, 2011, the EFF called the bill a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation," and said, "This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed."
Nancy Pelosi is far from the only member of Congress opposed to the legislation. On Tuesday, ten members of Congress signed a "dear colleague" letter expressing concerns with the bill. The signers were nine Democrats plus Republican Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning candidate for the GOP presidential nomination.
SOPA, they write, is "overly broad and would cause serious and long term damage to the technology industry, one of the few bright spots in our economy." The representatives warned that SOPA would result in "an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation."
Also opposed to the legislation is Republican Darrel Issa. "I don't believe this bill has any chance on the House floor," Issa told The Hill on Wednesday. "I think it’s way too extreme, it infringes on too many areas that our leadership will know is simply too dangerous to do in its current form."