On Dec. 15th, 2011, David Kravets wrote for Wired on the status of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). As its name suggests, SOPA is House legislation that would give private companies the ability to go after sites that display copyrighted material. However, there are concerns that the measure would go too far in stifling the freedom of the internet. More importantly, the bill could damage the structure of the internet by attempting to regulate the Domain Name System (DNS, or basically website names).
According to the article, the SOPA bill is still in the House Judiciary Committee, and hasn't been sent to the House floor for a vote. The big news out of committee was that "the lawmakers repeatedly rejected attempts to water-down the bill" by amending the provision that would let the Attorney General go after the DNS. Essentially, House lawmakers want the most controversial provision of the bill to remain in.
The article notes that several lawmakers expressed serious concerns as to why Congress is rushing SOPA through. Moreover, the article quoted 83 prominent internet engineers as saying “The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry.”
The source article can be found here.
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It's worth it to keep an eye on the progress of SOPA. SOPA's possible effects (upon passage) may be overblown. Nevertheless, it's at least possible that we could be looking at a vastly different internet. Keep an eye out for censoring campaigns…a few weeks ago, Wikipedia took its website offline to make a point.
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