SOPA: Will it Protect Against Internet Piracy or Weaken Creativity?
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Over the past two decades, Internet has become a major part of people’s life. Not only that it has made human’s life much simpler, Internet has also made a huge impact on major areas such as entertainment, economics, and politics. The various possibilities that Internet has given to the public seems to be in favor for most people and the citizens of Internet; however, the government and most license owning companies, such as record studio and television network, are terrified with the possibility of a never-ending piracy crime so that they decided to take an action to stop this phenomenon. One of the steps that they decided to take is to propose a motion called Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which is to protect copyrighted and patented works from being violated, and while this motion appears to be beneficial, experts thought that this bill would cripple the independency of the Internet itself (Condon, 2012). Furthermore, this statement has indicated that even though some benefits could be gained by implementing this bill to the U.S. constitution, there are also some disadvantages that could affect heavily on public and Internet itself and therefore creating two different standpoints toward this motion.
The first and the foremost difference between the opinions from both sides are their view on whether SOPA could actually end piracy crime and protect copyrighted works or not. The vast development of the Internet has made it possible for everyone to share their works to the world and download others’ work for various purposes. While this technology seems to be beneficial for almost everyone, it has also made copyright infringement inevitable for the people who are unaware about the policy of using other people’s work. Even those...
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Works Cited
Black, E. J. (2011, December 13). Internet Users, Free Speech Experts, Petition
Against SOPA. Retrieved from Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-j-black/stop-online-piracy-act-
vote_b_1145949.html
Condon, S. (2012, January 18). SOPA, PIPA: What you need to know. Retrieved
from CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57360665-
503544/sopa-pipa-what-you-need-to-know/
Laird, S. (2012, January 20). Mitt Romney: SOPA is a Threat to Freedom of Speech.
Retrieved from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/01/19/sopa-threat-
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Motion Pictures Association of America (2006, May 3). Worldwide Study of Losses to
the Film Industry & International Economies due to Piracy; Pirate Profiles.
Downloaded from http://www.fact-
uk.org.uk/site/media_centre/documents/2006_05_03leksumm.pdf