When was sopa stopped

At last night's Republican presidential debate , all four candidates--Rep. Rick Santorum, and former Massachusetts Gov. Still, Smith appears unwilling to stop pressing for some kind of legislation to curb online piracy. He reiterated in today's statement that the "theft of America's intellectual property costs the U.

Comics Music. Filed under: Stream Policy StoryStream. Contributors: Verge Staff. Linkedin Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. The Stop Online Piracy Act is a controversial bill that would allow the Justice Department to pull foreign sites "dedicated" to copyright infringement out of the DNS system and search engine results — effectively altering the way the internet works.

It's a hugely controversial bill that takes a scorched-earth approach to solving the thorny problem of copyright infringement on the web, and it's attracting a lot of attention from around the web. We're tracking the bill's progress and reaction from the industry right here.

January 13, Rep. Sottek Source Representative Lamar Smith. Sottek Via Techdirt Source Comcast 1 and 2. Sottek Source Reddit. One option, of course, is that Congress does nothing and leaves the current laws in place. Alternative legislation has also been proposed. It also beefs up the enforcement process. It would allow digital rights holders to bring cases before the U. International Trade Commission ITC , an independent agency that handles trademark infringement and other trade disputes.

OPEN's backers had posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal. SOPA supporters counter that the ITC doesn't have the resources for digital enforcement, and that giving it those resources would be too expensive.

Print Comment. Did Apple save Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine just in time? How to make good TV for the web, according to Amazon. Tech Jobs. See all jobs. The high cost of autism. Live texting your surgery. The two bills, Sopa in the House and Pipa in the Senate, ostensibly aim to stop the piracy of copyrighted material over the internet on websites based outside the US. Critics — among them, the founders of Google, Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Tumblr and Twitter — counter that the laws will stifle innovation and investment, hallmarks of the free, open internet.

The Obama administration has offered muted criticism of the legislation, but, as many of his supporters have painfully learned, what President Barack Obama questions one day, he signs into law the next.

First, the basics. The two bills are very similar. Sopa would allow copyright holders to complain to the US attorney general about a foreign website they allege is "committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations" of copyright law.

This relates mostly to pirated movies and music. Sopa would allow the movie industry, through the courts and the US attorney general, to send a slew of demands that internet service providers ISPs and search engine companies shut down access to those alleged violators, and even to prevent linking to those sites, thus making them "unfindable". It would also bar internet advertising providers from making payments to websites accused of copyright violations.