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American SOPA Has Global Implications

Today the UK media are talking about the English version of WikiPedia being down in protest against the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation that may be passed in America.

SOPA is not just an American issue but has huge international ramifications that go much deeper. SOPA will potentially affect all businesses and organisations that have a website, use social media (including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter), blog sites such as Posterous and Tumblr or bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon.

The Bill was introduced into the American House of Representatives at the end of 2011. If made law there, it would mean that any website, without warning and without giving the website's owner any opportunity of appeal, could be taken offline to protect against piracy and copyright infringement.

Any website that was felt to have infringed copyright or enabled infringement of copyright could face an American court order against them. This could result in barring search engines from linking to sites. For example, you would be unable to Google such a barred site and the courts would also require the internet service provider to block access to these "guilty" sites, so effectively making them appear "down".

Unauthorised streaming of copy would be a criminal activity, so in America you could face a prison sentence and fine. The only way to avoid this appears to be for the internet service provider to take voluntary action against websites that are found to be guilty of copyright infringement.

Ray Vernon, Managing Director of Splice Marketing, a website and e-commerce company based in Hampshire said,

"SOPA's ambition to protect copyright infringement is something we applaud. However, the legislation needs to be thought through more thoroughly. Many people may inadvertently infringe copyright or post copyrighted material onto a site, especially on websites that allow people to post comments onto their website. The worrying thing about this legislation, apart from being internet censorship, is that it will cripple the internet. With nearly every DNS Server based in the US and with all DNS Servers talking to each other, it will only take one SOPA judgement against a website in America to cause problems for websites and social media on a worldwide basis".

The debate about SOPA as a piece of legislation is due to continue in America during February 2012. It is currently generating a great deal of protest there. Its progress will be followed keenly in the UK by Splice Marketing and many other businesses and organisations.

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