What was sopa

Who supports SOPA, and who's against it? In general, media companies have united in favor of them, while tech's big names are throwing their might into opposing them. The bill's supporters dismiss accusations of censorship, saying that the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn't adequately prevent criminal behavior.

But SOPA's critics say the bill's backers don't understand the Internet's architecture, and therefore don't appreciate the implications of the legislation they're considering. In November, tech behemoths including Google GOOG , Fortune and Facebook lodged a formal complaint letter to lawmakers, saying: "We support the bills' stated goals. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities [and] mandates that would require monitoring of web sites.

Where does the bill stand now? SOPA was once expected to sail quickly through committee approval in the House. But tech companies, who largely oppose the bills, mobilized their users to speak out. Google GOOG , Fortune drew more than 7 million signatures for a petition that it linked on its highly trafficked homepage. The bills lost some of their Congressional backers as a result of the backlash. One major tenet of the original SOPA legislation has already been removed.

As originally written, SOPA would have required Internet service providers ISPs to block access to sites that law enforcement officials deemed pirate sites. But the White House said its analysis of the original legislation's technical provisions "suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity," and that it wouldn't support legislation that mandates manipulating the Internet's technical architecture. A few Google searches with links leading to nowhere.

In the beginning, global users of the web would have barely noticed pieces of the Internet going dark. Then there may have been a few investigative journalists On January 18, , the Internet went dark. SOPA was en route to quietly Join EFF Lists. This could theoretically involve an entire website being shut down because it contains a link to a suspect site. US-based internet service providers, payment processors and advertisers would be outlawed from doing business with alleged copyright infringers.

Sopa also calls for search engines to remove infringing sites from their results - Pipa does not include this provision. The bills would also outlaw sites from containing information about how to access blocked sites. The bills originally demanded that internet service providers block users from being able to access suspect sites using a technique called Domain Name System DNS blocking.

This would effectively make them "disappear" from the internet - and is a process already used in China and Iran. A number of related issues are working their way through either U.

SOPA stirred up several passionate debates, but copyright law lay at the heart of the bill. Both sides seem to recognize that piracy is a problem, and that protecting content is important. If you look at these Internet-related issues at their base as free-speech concerns, the battle SOPA started is still continuing.

Full copyright law reform is likely far off, but the topic is being discussed on Capitol Hill.