Tag Archives: sopa

2012 may shape up to be the most important year yet in terms of intellectual property law developments during the Internet Age. A month into the new year, we have already seen major developments. On January 18, we had the Wednesday that Wikipedia and other popular websites shut down in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (“PIPA”). The protests from technology companies and users seemed to have worked, as both the Senate and the House Judiciary Committee canceled forthcoming action regarding the bills. This likely means that the bills – at least in their controversial forms – will not be moving forward. This does not mean, however, that copyright laws will stay put. The same day as the protests, January 18, California representative Darrell Issa introduced the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (it goes by “OPEN”). Several Californian members…
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Internet users throughout America (and in much of the world too) are by now familiar with two infamous pieces of legislation that are working their way through our Congress – the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (“PIPA”). The issues surrounding the laws caused multiple leading internet sites to close down on Wednesday of last week. Taking part in the protest were popular sites like Reddit, BoingBoing and the English-language version of Wikipedia. There is no doubt that SOPA and PIPA deal with an important issue – copyright infringement – but many technology companies and internet users feel that they go too far. SOPA and PIPA did come from the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, two organizations that often made negative headlines for their aggressive pursuit of alleged file sharers of copyrighted music and movies. With SOPA and…
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