I n d ep en d en t
Issue no.
S t u de nt
V o ic e
o f
B o is e
S tat e
Sin ce
1933
35
January
2012
Volume 24
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Boise, Idaho
Top Stories
Safe driving
First issue free
SOPA, successfully
sunk
Winter driving can be dangerous but not if you exercise caution.
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Suzanne Craig
Developing News Editor
Mat masters
Overview: Saturday, internet addicts across the nation breathed a sigh of relief. Congress indefinitely postponed SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and its sister bill PIPA (the Protect IP Act) following an explosion of protests on thousands of websites. The most notorious was Wikipedia’s 24-hour shutdown on Wednesday.
Wrestling and gymnastics victorious in Beauty and the Beast.
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It’s over
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PIPA
SOPA
DMC passed as a law in 1998 and is the current policy.
PIPA passed the Senate Committee last May and was up for final vote, but was indefinitely postponed Saturday.
SOPA was in the House of Representatives when it was indefinitely postponed Saturday.
What does PIPA do?
SOPA was proposed to modify DMC and adjust the penalties for pirating copyrighted content. Though this is often assumed to only concern songs or movies, counterfeit prescription drugs and other consumer goods are also protected. Revlon and True Religion Brand Jeans support SOPA because of this.
What does DMC do?
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DMC was passed in 1998 in response to the explosion of the internet as a resource for public use. It was primarily designed to implement two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties: the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Phonogram means audio recording—the old school way to officially say “audio files.”
Pirated content found - now what? Pirated content posted to a website.
Weather
Copyright owner contacts website and complains.
Today
Website takes down video, contacts the user who posted it to explain. User can counter-claim, saying they do have a right to the disputed content.
Rain & Snow
39º high
40%
chance of precipitation
Tomorrow
43º high
10%
chance of precipitation
Wednesday
Showers
46º high
30%
chance of precipitation
What’s Inside News Briefs
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Claims and counter-claims go on and on, then go to court.
Weaknesses
Unable to act against foreign-based websites without their government’s cooperation. This isn’t as problematic as it sounds; recently the international website Megaupload was shut down: four employees were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand, while the company itself is registered in Hong Kong.
Mostly Cloudy
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BITER
DMC
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998)
Breaking up is difficult. Here’s how to make it less painful.
AR mpton/THE Alyssa Cu
Senator Harry Reid (D-Calif.) remains hopeful a compromise will be reached. Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and 24 co-sponsors introduced an alternative to SOPA in the House of Representatives recently, called Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN). The full text of all these bills is available online at keepthewebopen.com.
PROTECT IP Act (proposed 2011, shot down 2012)
PIPA, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (note the acronym spells the word “Protect”). It focuses on online pirating, including international sites.
What does SOPA do?
It is a re-write of the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Acts (COICA) which failed to pass in 2010.
The parts of the bill which affect the internet were the main targets of the protests.
Pirated content found - now what?
Pirated content found - now what?
It gives the Department of Justice the right to serve a court order against the website as a whole if an individual owner cannot be found.
Under SOPA, the U.S. Department of Justice can seek a court order to prevent other sites (advertising agencies, search engines, etc.) from linking to this site or allowing users to access this site through their services.
PIPA isn’t about specific content, it’s more targeted against “rogue websites,” or websites that host pirated content in general.
After a court order is granted, it can be served to advertising agencies, service providers and “information location tools” (search engines). At that point, the websites served with the court order would disable all links to the rogue website—the IP address would still get you to the rogue website, but links would not.
How is this bill different from SOPA?
PIPA doesn’t do much regarding penalties for people pirating content, whereas SOPA would have changed the legal repercussions for individuals and corporations.
Who protested, how, on Wednesday? Flickr: provided app to let contributors darken their photos for 24 hours
Stop Online Piracy Act (proposed 2011, shot down 2012)
Google: blackened logo
Boing Boing: 24-hour shutdown
Firefox: special home page (black, stop censorship banner)
Reddit: 24-hour shutdown
For more, visit sopastrike.com.
WHAT HAPPENED TO WIKIPEDIA? Wikipedia shut down for 24 hours on Jan. 18, featuring a black screen and a paragraph explaining how SOPA could destroy the free exchange of knowledge on the internet. It also had an explanation on how to contact your senator and representative in support of the protest. The shutdown started at midnight eastern time and went until midnight of Jan. 19. Some protesters admitted to being highly entertained by panicked tweets from teens who couldn’t access Wikipedia that day.
A site is found to be primarily based on distributing pirated content.
So, that’s what PIPA does. What’s the difference?
It provides a two-step process for copyright holders to get reimbursed if they were harmed by the pirated content service. They complain in writing and, after it’s validated, the site needs to take down any links to the content (similar to DMC). If the site complies, great. No problems. If they don’t, they can be sued for injunctive relief by the intellectual property rights holder and even shut down entirely. Step two targets the individual pirating the content rather than getting something for the copyright holder. Unauthorized streaming of pirated content would be penalized by up to five years in prison for 10 of these infringements within six months.
Senators reconsidered Which ones swapped sides? Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) Co-sponsor of PIPA
Senator John Boozman (R-Ark.) Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) Co-sponsor of PIPA
Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas)
ONLINE Register your own opinion on SOPA and related protests at arbiteronline.com.
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