How Does SOPA Work, and Why Should I Care?

It allows the U.S. attorney general to seek a court order against the targeted offshore Web site that would, in turn, be served on Internet providers in an effort to make the target virtually disappear. It's kind of an Internet death penalty.

This means that if news24.com happened to have an article or two that could be interpreted as piracy-friendly, the domain could be blocked so it's inaccessible by visiting news24.com.

This may sound like a good thing, bye bye to piracy and bye bye to bad websites around the Internet that are constantly popping up now days.

It is a good thing, but at the same time it has a lot of counter productive effects on the Internet and its users.

What Are The Negatives?

* Online security will be compromised

The DNS system which controls the domain names on the Internet will be compromised and loopholes created which will allow for hackers to gain further access and cause more issues. In further detail, this would allow for hackers to meddle with how domain names and registrations are handled, it may open up security loopholes in the global DNS.

* Business Websites / e-Commerce

Small business to corporate websites could be shut down for false accusations of copyright infringement.

* Freedom of speech / blogging

If it's possible to post pirated content on the site (websites such as Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter), or information that could further online piracy, a claim can be brought against it. This can be something as minor as you posting a copyrighted image to your Facebook page, or piracy-friendly information in the comments of a post such as this one.

If you made a video of yourself on your Apple iPhone singing the song "Waka Waka by Shakria" you would be in violation of the bill.

There’s actually a provison that says that an ordinary user can go to jail for five years for posting any copyrighted work.

BUT funnily enough it doesn't end online piracy;

What the bill can't do is block numeric IP addresses, so you could still access news24.com, or any other site that could be censored, if you knew that address. This is important because it means this bill can't do much to stop downloaders of pirated content. If a domain name is blocked, everything will still work via the numeric IP address. The problem is that your average user of your website has not a clue what your IP address is, or how to find it.

With the economies of the world currently in the slump and moving at a rapid pace to be online and with online representing the future of the world, this could not come at a worse time.

The last thing in the world we need right now is a law that puts small businesses, especially small web-based businesses, in danger.

Companies against SOPA: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn --
Yahoo has reportedly quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the organization's enthusiastic support for SOPA.

Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser, responded by creating a page saying: "Protect the Internet: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation." It warns that "your favourite Web sites both inside and outside the US could be blocked based on an infringement claim."

This bothers me even more because a lot of South African websites host their websites internationally (predominantly in America) and could be subject to this bill.

What are your thoughts? Do you think this bill could interfere with your online usage?