Many of the Internet’s most popular sites, such as Wikipedia and Reddit, staged a blackout today in protest of two pieces of legislation: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate.
The aims for SOPA and PIPA are to stop foreign sites from abusing intellectual property rights and pirating electronic media such as movies, music and video games. Supporters of the bills state they will help to protect American intellectual property and therefore secure jobs. Opponents, which include the aforementioned sites as well as online giants Google and Amazon, claim the language in SOPA and PIPA is too vague and powerful, and will unfairly punish websites and stifle innovation.
NBC 5 in Chicago today posted an article explaining how SOPA and PIPA could impact small businesses. The acts prevent the linking of copyrighted material, and requires sites to monitor and block any such links to offending web pages. While this is targeted at stopping large piracy organizations overseas, it also means a small business could be impacted if a reader leaves a comment with a link to copyrighted material, such as an image, or video and music from sites like YouTube.
To learn more about how SOPA and PIPA could affect businesses, read “How SOPA and PIPA Could Impact Your Small Business” on NBC 5. For more information on the acts, read these articles from Fox News and The New York Times.
