Gigaom
Many internet users in the United States have watched with horror as countries like France and Britain have proposed or instituted so-called “three strikes” laws,
which cut off internet access to those accused of repeated acts of
copyright infringement. Now the U.S. has its own version of this kind of
law, and it is arguably much worse: the Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced in the House this week,
would give governments and private corporations unprecedented powers
to remove websites from the internet on the flimsiest of grounds, and
would force internet service providers to play the role of copyright
police.
To recap a bit of history, the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA is the House version of a previous bill proposed by the Senate, which was known as the PROTECT-IP Act
(a name that was an abbreviation for “Preventing Real Online Threats
to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property”). That in
turn was a rewritten version of a previous proposed bill that was
introduced in the Senate last year. Not wanting to be outdone by their
Senate colleagues when it comes to really long acronyms, the House version is also known as
the E-PARASITE Act, which is short for “Enforcing and Protecting
American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation.”
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