How SOPA and PIPA could affect you

tell that to the 5-6 posters before you who have referenced corporate "greed"!!

if they want to reduce 1% theft to 0% theft, where's the "greed" in that?

i agree this bill is misguided, but if i screw multi-gazillionaire bill gates out of 12 bucks by using some black market copy of "Windowz", then **I** am the greedy pig, not he.

isn't there a single capitalist on this board?!

 

Name them, please. I didn't see their posts, and I'd love to know who they are.

Once again,copy right infringement is not the same as theft. It is truly bothering me that you seem to have such a hard time understanding that.

Whoa! Did you just say software piracy is okay, as long as the copy right owner is already rich? Because it's not, and if you think it is, then you seriously need to re-evaluate your position on this matter.

 

CatT- You almost seem to justify the act here - something Majorgeeks has NEVER endorsed is theft by pirated software.

You are not a greedy pig, but a thief if you obtain a copy of Windows with any other means than a certified CD with hologram as Redmond intended it to be sold. [Sorry FredG, but the OD comparision to NewEgg was a poor example. The NewEgg version is OEM and like Apples and Kumquats in pricing for a reason]

This is what the original bill was to address, theft of intellectual property. The argument is not against only theft, when open communication is instead threaded with Orwellian means of closing transfers of communication. A site like MG is shut down for even this thread by overzealous policing by a large company.

Another view from Wikipedia

 

this is truly the twilight zone.

several posters toss about lines like "I don't condone music/software piracy", all the while calling the copyright holders "greedy selfish billionaires". what ELSE is one to conclude?

i have agreed -- REPEATEDLY -- that these bills are orwellian and poorly thought out. i'm just saying that there is nothing to be gained by villifying the copyright holders.

peace out.

 

Here is a story that explains some of the ways the government intends to try and push through.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-20/megaupload-arrests-FBI/52697186/1

 

CatT:- All I keep reading from you is a bunch of Trolling about how 'evil' piracy is, (and I haven't read one person that's said it's okay), despite all your misquotes and taking a few words from posts and quoting in them totally out of context). And how the rich have a right to to do, and charge what they want.
Okay, so that's YOUR opinion, and you're entitled to it, even if it doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone else.
That said, it is totally irrelevant to the thread, which is about pressure group select minorities controlling and infringing upon the the rights of others, which no matter how you word it, they don't own, (yet).
So, disprove us with some hard evidence. The only facts and figures I keep reading from you seem to have been plucked out of thin air, or maybe from another planet, ('prolly Ur-anus).

 

I think my reputation as a conservative capitalist is known on this forum. :-D

I don't think anyone here would have an issue with reduction or elimination of piracy. But, not at the expense of freedom of speech. (like this bill would allow)

How is Bill Gates greedy? And how does that relate to the gubment having the ability to shut down a website that has a link to a pirate site?

 

When I was MUCH younger, some friends and I would occasionally sneak in the back door of the cinema and watch a movie without paying. Did we steal the movie ? Nobody was missing a copy !
If I steal your bicycle, you no longer have one to ride. If I copy your bicycle (pirate) we now BOTH have one to ride . Doesn't mean I was going to buy one.
I think it is important to look at motivation - WHY people pirate. I havent watched a movie in a cinema since the 80's . Why ? Because I don't think it is worth the money. I have, in recent years, watched movies on ON DEMAND occasionally, because it is better (and cheaper)than paying $12 at a cinema, and being stuck with price gouging at the concessions stand. I can also pause the movie if I have to go to the bathroom, or answer the phone, or do any number of other things . I can eat what I want, the way I want it, or watch in my underwear while drinking beer and smoking a hookah if I wish .
As previously pointed out, Hollywood has constantly bi*ched and moaned at every turn of technology, yet they continue to make record profits .
Bill Gates said in 1998 :

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

I'm not saying pirating is right, I think that maybe Hollywood execs, like Professional athletes, are a bunch of overpaid crybabies .

 

This opens up a whole other can of worms: If the only purpose was to protect intellectual property, there was no need for either SOPA or PIPA. The fact that federal authorities were able to take Megaupload offline and arrest the site's founder and employees for enabling and assisting with piracy of copyrighted material, is proof that we already have sufficient laws in place to protect the intellectual property of copyright holders. And that it can be done old-fashioned way, through investigation and due process.

What is missing is the necessary infrastructure and resources (in the form of both money and knowledge), to enforce the existing laws n an efficient manner, while making sure that the rights of individuals are not stepped on. The right to free speech and fair use being the ones most at risk of being trampled.

That a mature adult can sometimes be capable of the kind of complex reasoning that acknowledges that issues like this are not wholly black or white. It is possible to be staunchly against software piracy, while at the same time believing that the retail price of a new copy of Windows 7 is unreasonably high.

You have? Where? You've been railing against piracy, and come very close to accusing some of us of it, but you've yet to explain your objection to SOPA or PIPA. Which by the way is what this thread and discussion are about. You're the one who brought piracy into this.

Exactly! One of my favorite game developers have said more than once, that the best method for combating piracy is to reward honest users for buying the product, by keeping the price reasonable, and by making sure that customers get such high value for their money that buying the game honestly is a better choice than pirating it. Once you have the game, you register the product key on their website to prove ownership, and they give you several gigabytes of free content.

Of course that free content is pirated and you can get it that way if you want, but the idea that software piracy is best prevented by rewarding the honest customer rather than going after the pirates, is unfortunately far too rare an attitude.

 

Well said. There's a hilarious picture floating the internets about the pain and inconvenience the movie industry makes a paying customer suffer before they can watch the movie on the DVD it bought, but I'll hold off on posting it here, since it flat out says that pirating the movie is the better option if you want to be able to actually watch it. Things that glorify piracy should probably not be posted here... But the point that the movie on the DVD isn't worth the asking price, bears repeating.

 

This comment brought back memories of an infamous Internet cartoon dealing with Metallica and the original Napster.

(Warning: This clip contains adult language and is not safe to view at work.)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS6udST6lbE

 

Buttery cornhole ?

LOL

 

In Metallica's defense, their complaint was (if I remember right) that tracks from an album not yet released were available free on Napster. So we're not talking about fans sharing music back and forth without paying the band, we're talking about music that was not yet on the market, leaked to the pirate community.

They over-reacted, and they handled it so wrong they couldn't have messed it up more if they tried, but underneath all that raging bluster was (again, if I remember right) an actually valid complaint.

 

Really, at the end of the day, nobody will ever know how much illegitimate downloading of copyright material costs the copyright holders, because I would guess the vast majority of it just gets left around on people's HDD's and wiped or burnt and never even referred to again. As said before, you can't just assume 5,000 D/L's = 5,000 lost sales. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't make it right in the first place, I'm just pointing out the fallacy of that line of thinking.
Everyone that I have been aware of that was 'naughty' and used material that they D/L'ed, nearly always actually want to buy the original if they really like it, anyway. So one could argue the pro's and cons ad-nausium and by it's very nature, nothing can be proved, regarding losses Vs profits either way.
What I see happening with the WWW, and find a lot more disturbing, is an over-commercialization and over-exploitation of the 'Net in general. This results in more crap been pushed at us through advertising, (not all of it legal), a proliferation of spam, scams and malware to try and support same. And often sub-standard, under-developed games, utes and O.S.'s being flogged to the public, (all at full prices, of course).
Now, in the last decade or so, we are finding our very liberties, and freedom of communication being progressively more eroded. I find this disturbing, i.m.o., more so than some people abusing copying. Especially when I read of cases like this:

Minnesota mom owes $1.92 million for downloading songs:-

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/minnesota-mom-owes-192-million-for-downloading-songs-210433

She did wrong and deserved a 'Cease and Desist' Notice, or maybe even a fine, but nearly two million bucks for 24 songs - come on! Just to be made "an example". That doesn't even remotely resemble justice to me.

Yes, I am a capitalist, (I am a Director of several Co's, Duh!), and of course I see the need for protecting profits. I have had several patented items cheaply copied and flogged off, myself. But I am also for maintaining the rights of the individual at grass roots level, which is one of the great things P.C.'s and the i-Net enables us to do. And no, it does NOT extend to the 'right' to do anything illegal. Bad laws aren't good laws just because they are the law. That's where proposals like SOPA's and PIPA's current ones need to be nipped in the bud, i.m.h.o.
~ Just my two penny's worth of opinion on the matter.

 

Tracing it back, this was an issue of internal theft within Metallica's organization or record company. Someone in charge of the master recordings let their guard down (or was bribed); hence the music ended up on Napster before the CD's official release.

The same thing can and has happened in the movie industry. The pirate copies of a movie playing in theaters (not yet available on DVD) often trace back to "legit" DVD or streamed copies made available to movie critics prior to theatrical release.

 

Once again, proof the entertainment industry has its head up its a$$.

* In most other civil cases involving under $5,000 in actual damages, many states require filing in small claims court. The most the plaintiff is usually entitled to is actual damages (in this case, about $24 at a buck per download) plus court costs and attorneys fees. In some cases, the plaintiff can recover triple damages ($72) plus court costs and attorneys fees.

* If a judgment of $1000 (triple damages plus a few hours of an entry-level law firm's greenest attorney) was awarded in this case:

* It would more than cover the true "damages" incurred by the intellectual property owner(s).

* It would still serve as a stiff notice that copyright infringement is illegal.

* The plaintiffs would actually have a chance of collecting the money! In this case, the plaintiffs (assuming they pursue collecting damages) are attempting to squeeze blood out of a rock.​

 

@Phantom: Very well said!

That's what I thought. And that makes it even more stupid and ignorant to blame Napster, rather than the person inside the company.

But that's assuming the plaintiff's main concern is to recover lost profits form lost sales, and it's not. As Phantom pointed out, these lawsuits are filed because the companies filing them want to make an example of the defendant, and because they think it will frighten the rest of the internet into ceasing with the piracy. Whatever they were after when they took that Minnesota woman to court, it wasn't justice or fair compensation.

 

I had a similar issue back in the 1980s when I was a sales consultant for a radio station.

As part of a presentation to a prospective client, we would often use "spec tapes" - a demo recording of our ideas to promote their business, similar to an ad agency using a story board.

The owner of an electronics store brushed me off and said he would not buy ad time on the station I worked at. The following week, the competing radio station in town was running the same ad - re-cut by their announcers, but word-for-word from the spec tape I presented.

The kicker in this is that the owner of the electronics store was also a paid columnist at the local newspaper.

When I confronted him in front of several store customers - asking if, as a writer, he knew the definitions of plagiarism and copyright infringement - he threatened to call the cops. Although my employer didn't want to waste the legal fees on going after him and the competing radio station, it was priceless seeing his reaction to my having busted him. Needless to say, the ad on the competing radio station was quickly pulled and re-written.

 

I think anyone who has ever created something can understand the feelings of a copyright holder when their work is pirated and/or used for profit without their consent, or without giving them due credit.

The problem with SOPA, and with a lot of existing copyright legislation, is that far too many tools aimed to protect the rights of copyright holders end up curtailing the rights of honest customers who paid for the item (ebook, song or movie), or it ends up over-reacting like in the example Phantom posted, of a person being fined $2 million for 24 songs.

There is a middle ground. It's just that no one seems to be interested in finding it.

 

no, but you can certainly assume it's at least one!

and what is all this about me "condoning" piracy?? if there's been anyone in this thread taking the sides of the "greedy" billionaires, it has been I!

oh, but wait, i've also been accused of calling them "greedy".....

:confused

 

If you must quote someone, do it in context, Instead of taking a sentence out of a paragraph to 'prove' a pointless point.rolleyes
Nobody knows how much illegal copying copying costs anyone, or even if it may make the owner money for that matter.

In context, I said:

My concern is when someone gets a $1.92M fine over 24 I-tunes, just because they basically want to terrorize the public. Don't ya think that is a tad greedy? Maybe you're cool with that and would like to see her doing Life, (which would cost the tax payers about $150K per year, b.t.w.) Or when sites, can be shut shut down without warning because someone didn't like a link or pic.

 

"Draconian", yes, "excessive", yes, "ridiculous", yes, "greedy", no. They are obviously not fining her for the revenue of the fee itself; they are doing it to scare off others from copying her crimes, as you said.

And I don't see anything added by your expanded quote. Who cares if 5000 pirate downloads don't result in 5000 lost sales?! I never asserted such a ridiculous claim -- I care if 5000 pirate downloads result in *1* lost sale!! You seem to be dancing around this point.

Back to "greed", the term really has no meaning in a free market. If a record company wants to charge $1.92 million for a song in the first place, all the best to them. They own it, they (and theirs) created it, they can do w/e the heck they want with it. Nothing "greedy" about that.

Truth be told, I prolly wouldn't buy it at that price.

 

I swore I wouldn't get into this thread but I have to. Look at iTunes and similar, isn't it nice to be able to buy the tune you want for a buck instead of shelling out some $15 to be disappointed except for the one or two tunes that you like. I found that Steve Jobs was a visionary in changing the business paradigm of music. Except for the old schoolers who paid Mariah some $100M for seven future albums and they now have to prey on some new band hoping to recoup some monies.rolleyesuke

The business model has changed and these dinosaurs are just trying to save their jobs. With the advent of proper technology, anybody can create good music and offer it up on their own website, listen and if you like it then buy it. Most folks aren't pirates and will willingly pay for quality, who needs the middle man anymore?:confused

As to movies, well it's going the same way, what $8/mth for unlimited Netflix? These folks that spend millions on retaining these associations to fight 'shrinkage' are barking up the wrong tree and they will become irrelevant fairly soon due to simple economics.

Give us good content!

 

Not entirely true. It seems apparent that you are (interested) as are many of the people involved in this discussion.

It is direct actions and protests, such as occurred this past week, that nudge legislators and policy makers in a direction
that is closer to that middle ground.

SOPA Strike
Scroll down the page and look at the Confirmed Participants.

SOPA Strike: In Numbers and Screen Shots


Emergency NY Tech Meetup

 

Personally I'm not seeing the point in spending so much money on this.
Lets take a look at this logically.

My girlfriend is and has been fighting the good fight now for several months, putting hours upon hours in to hunt down mega-uploaders and is in contact with the F.B.I.

She is a needlework designer, most of you have no idea what that is I know, many people don't. She has her own work up for pirate download on many sites, but she is not fighting just for herself since she is reletively new to the world and isn't losing "That" much money.
Her (and fellow designer friends) are banging their heads against a brick wall because the F.B.I. says that (basically) Movies and Music is priority.
Now while there are a lot of movie and music being downloaded there is a little bit of overlooking here.
1 $20 needlework chart in PDF format is around 10mb.
The person she has just reported to an ignoring F.B.I. has uploaded several "Packs"
Each of these packs averages 5-6GB.
Now lets put this into money terms.
$20 per 10mb into a 5GB file. That's approx 500 charts per pack.
Which is approx $10,000 per pack.
The average number of downloads per pack across the board is 2500.
That's an average of $25,000,000 per upload.
So far she has found over 50 uploads on various sites.
That's $1,250,000,000
1 uploader, 50 uploads.
But this is not important enough.

The logical side of this is a little different though, I've said to her many times that not everyone who downloads a file would buy it if it wasn't available for download. Many people have an adiction of sorts to download as much as they can for bragging rights and in many cases have very little knowledge of what they actually have, they just know how many they have.

Which brings me to the obvious point in my opinion that I have seen and thought about.
With the advent of I-tunes and Net-Flicks and Steam and the like, the amount of downloading is dropping fairly quickly, you no loner have to pay $15 for an album or $25 for a movie or $70 for a game and you no longer have to go to the store to buy them either.
Pasing a bill like this is simply going to enrage a mass of people whether they are guilty or not.

I said to my girl she should try doing what they did to P2P downloading, flood the "Market" with bad files, in her case a chart which is kind of like a map of where stitches and colours go, upload some with major mistakes in them that will not be noticed until dozens of hours of work have gone into it.
Music... flood with albums where all the songs have white noise half way through each song, upload movies with the endings cut off.
If enough of these files are spread througout the net people will eventually get fed up with "Downloading junk"
This way it ONLY targets the downloaders and if you can rid of the downloaders then the uploaders have no reason for continuing.
Now this is a lot of work for a small group like hers, but for big business companies it would be pretty easy.
What better DRM is possible than the only option for a working copy is the legit one?

I think most of this bull comes from the big businesses putting pressure on governments because the money they are losing.
But like I said, look at the money my girl and her friends are losing, difference is they can't afford the lawyers like the big guys can so they are overlooked.
The other difference is the big guys while losing millions are still making billions.
My girl found 1 of her charts, just 1 in this example , and traced it and found that the amount of times it's be up and downloaded add's up to a cool $95,000 in lost revenue for her in the last 4 months, she has made $900 from the same chart.

I think before jumping on a widespread ban/action they should look at the whole problem and accept help from people like my girl who are trying to help.

The example I gave above of the one uploader with 50 uploads, she sent this info to the F.B.I. and the response was along the lines of "That's a lot of eveidence but you need a lawyer to send out 10 cease and disist orders to shut the offenders internet down"
She spoke to a lawyer, to get the 10 notices and then a law suit against the offender will begin proceedings at around $25,000 fee.
Now obviously neither her nor her friends can afford this so the uploader will continue.
If the F.B.I. simply knocked on this persons door and ceased their files and then prosecuted.... how fast do you think that news would travel and how many people would freak out to the point of thinking "OMG I go on that site, that means they have my IP etc?

Basically the way I see it, these bills are a waste of money and are not going to have the desired effect, where action taken against the ones who upload masses of moneys worth of files with rattle the cages maybe just enough to cut it down and give the edge to the authorities.
Instead they are going to spend a fortune on annoying millions of innocent users/voters.

Good one :wine

 

Interesting post Ned. Hope your friend finds a way to stop them.

So, not to put words in your mouth, and I have not had any coffee yet, but it seems to me that if you track the money, it is not really about enforcing laws, but enforcing the laws only for the rich companies?

 

Yep, like I've already alluded to, I've had several patented products and inventions, including code stolen by cheapy copies made illegally in China and S.E. Asia, so I know what it's like to lose a long and heavy investment in in products and ideas. (I'm a bit of a scientist/Inventor geek, for those that don't know).
Guess what, there wasn't anything much I could do about it, either. I was basically if you want to take on the Republic of China, et-al - then good luck rolleyes. So the Protection Agencies effectively did squat. Nice to see my good old tax payer's money well spent on useless bureaucrats again.:mad Big money talks as usual.

 

There is a great irony I would love to point out here, but I will self censor myself so I don't aggravate the Mods... :-D:-D

 

No, it is political, I have my political forums for that. :-D I think someone got a new ban hammer, and is just wanting to try it out! :-D:-D

 

That's how it would seem, you know what they say... Money Talks.
Sad but true, I try not to think how much money my girl "Could" have made or how much she has "Lost" because it's pretty depressing to think that in just a few months if everyone who downloaded her charts had bought them then we could have paid nearly half towards a nice house.
But I also know that's not exactly true as I said, only a small percentage of those who downloaded it would have bought it if it was not available through these means.

 

LOL, I read the rules... :-D

 

It didn't work for the record and movie industry and they had considerable resources.

The FBI can't prosecute because it's a civil violation. Has your GF contacted any of these hosting sites and asked them to remove her copyrighted material? Though some won't, quite a few will do so in order to pay lip service to the law.

 

I can see argument bout or if we were the musicians or made the movies. but i also dont agree w the things there trying to do it. i think they should go bout it differently imo

 

Sorry but that's not true.
It becomes a criminal offence when you have distributed for financial or personal gain or making it available by computer network to the public of 1 or more files totalling more than $1000.
This is info direct from the F.B.I.

We are talking about someone who has distributed over 1 BILLION dollars worth of material.
This is jail time.

Unfortunately like I said, even though the Agent she is in contact with agree's, the F.B.I.'s priority is with Movies and Music.

As for contacting sites and hosts, thats a joke, she does, frequently and if she scares them enough they will just make the site private.
Now Facebook, they are a law unto themselves, if she reports a violator on FB they send all my girlfriends info including Name, Address etc to the uploader with a notice of cease and desist.

Seriously, the loop holes these violators are finding is crazy.

I could give you dozens of examples but the post would be monstrous :-D

 

They're baaaaack

Thought SOPA and PIPA were gone? Have a look at this. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...-could-kill-internet-privacy-for-good/242853/

Potentially far worse in intent and outcome-"For The Children" , naturally.

 

Are SOPA/PIPA Dead?...A Shocking Turn of Events

More news about the SOPA event that sitepronews decided to email me with. Enjoy this nice little recap.

Are SOPA/PIPA Dead?...
A Shocking Turn of Events
A SPN Exclusive Article By David Jackson (c) 2012(via sitepro emails)
Last November I wrote an article titled The Advent of Internet Censorship in America.

To recap:

"The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith [R-TX] and a bipartisan gróup of 12 initial co-sponsors. The aim of the bill is to help U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders fight online transmission of restricted intellectual property." (Source: Wikipedia)

Opponents of the bill says it goes too far and threatens to shut down or censor legitimate websites that might inadvertently link to or display such content.

Anyway, when I wrote that article back in November, the bill was sitting in the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet. It had yet to be introduced to the floor for a vote. At the time of writing this article, it doesn't look like it's going to.

Issa's Crystal Ball

Also, back in November, Reuters reported that Darrell Issa, the Republican congressional representative for California, said that there is no way that SOPA will pass.

"There is a very broad coalition from far left to far right who realize this will hurt innovation, something we can't afford to do. And there are other ways to accomplish what they say is their goal.

I don't believe this bill has any chance on the House floor. 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."

As it turns out, Darrell Issa was right. The bill WILL NOT pass as it is currently constituted. So what happened?

Timeline: A Shocking Turn Of Events

January 13, 2012 - In an incredible turn of events, six Republican Senators have asked Majority Leader Harry Reid not to hold a vote on PIPA (The Protect IP Act), and the Senate version of SOPA. The Protect IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or PIPA), also known as Senate Bill 968 or SB968, is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010.

They write...

"Prior to committee action, some members expressed substantive concerns about the bill, and there was a commitment to resolve them prior to floor consideration. That resolution has not yet occurred."

And as an amazíng validation of the grassroots response to SOPA, led by groups like Fight for the Future, EFF, Public Knowledge, and Demand Progress, they write, "Since the mark-up, we have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and other stakeholders with vocal concerns about possible unintended consequences of the proposed legislation, including breaches in cybersecurity, damaging the integrity of the Internet, costly and burdensome litigation, and dilution of First Amendment rights." (Source: Open Congress.org)

January 15, 2012 - Various news outlets reported that President Barack Obama said he would not support SOPA. The Obama administration said that it is opposed to the way the bill is currently written because it limits Internet freedom.

January 18, 2012 - Strike! The Internet Goes Dark

In what is being called the largest online protest in history, Wikipedia, Reddit and several other major sites went "dark" to protest SOPA. And while Google didn't go black, it blackened its logo.

How was it done?

A simple piece of code called STOP SOPA, replaced a site's landing page with a black screen. Moving your mouse over the screen revealed a message explaining the need to kill SOPA and a link to anti-SOPA site AmericanCensorship.org.

You can see a complete list of confirmed SOPA strike participants at SOPAStrike.com.

January 19, 2012 - Striking a Obviously Partisan Tone, Senate Minority Leader McConnell Tells Majority Leader Reid to Kill PIPA

"Looks like the next domino in the SOPA/PIPA fight just fell. Tony Romm is reporting that Senate minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell is calling on Democrats to drop PIPA.

That has a high likelihood of killing off what little Republican support is left for PIPA, because where McConnell goes, so go most Republican Senate votes." (Source: Techdirt)

January 20, 2012 - SOPA and PIPA Postponed Indefinitely After Protests

"When the entire Internet gets angry, Congress takes notice. Both the House and the Senate on Friday backed away from a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills, tossing them into limbo and throwing doubt on their future viability.

The Senate had been scheduled to vote next week on the Protect IP Act (PIPA) -- a bill that once had widespread, bipartisan support. But on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was postponing the vote "in light of recent events."

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives said it is putting on hold its version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The House will "postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said in a written statement." (Source: CNN/Money)

Conclusion

While the current versions of SOPA/PIPA may, in fact, be dead, politicians on both sides continue to work on a viable solution to combat Internet piracy. In fact, CNN/Money is reporting, alternative legislation has already been proposed.

"A bipartisan group of senators introduced the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) on January 18 -- the same day as the Wikipedia site blackout.

Among other differences, OPEN offers more protection than SOPA would to sites accused of hosting pirated content. It also beefs up the enforcement process. It would allow digital rights holders to bring cases before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent agency that handles trademark infringement and other trade disputes."

Stay tuned...this thing is far from over. ​

About The Author
David Jackson is a marketing consultant, and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com - Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! free-marketing-tips-blog.com ​