These sources are merely intended to explore the economic consequences of piracy and how that affects the united states in terms of jobs and unemployment rates.They also explore the possible consequences of enacting a bill like how the bill could grossly affect the economy and innovation adversely. These sources just provide insight into the economic need and consequences of SOPA.
Source 1
Title: SOPA, Internet Regulation And the Economics of Piracy
Author: Julian Sanchez
Summary: This journal address all the key economic reasons for SOPA. It discusses how SOPA actually doesn’t have the effect on merchandise sale as it is thought to by SOPA proponents. It examines all major industries that are supposed to be greatly affected by piracy economically such as the music and the movie industries.
Useful Information: It uses research that finds no direct correlation between increased piracy and sales. It makes the argument that the most pirated movies and music are actually the most successful ones and aren’t going to affect the industries bottom line. The most pertinent thing about this source is it addresses the claim that piracy affects jobs and a law preventing piracy would increase jobs and improve the economy. This site discusses how over the past decades sales in music have gone up and then down it would be helpful to understand the different causes other than the ones discussed in the journal.
Additional Sources:
Source 2
Title: SOPA: How much does online piracy really cost the economy?
Author: Brad Plummer
Summary: This source discusses how much truth are in the figures used for the SOPA debate. For example “those industry-estimated losses come to just $446 million per year,” are examined and according to the author most of those numbers don’t hold up.
Useful Information: The article also raises an interesting point, which is, if someone isn’t allowed to download an item that doesn’t necessarily mean they will go to the store and buy the item. The article questions whether there is a real correlation between the movie industry and the economy as a whole.
Additional Sources: It would be apt to do research on the peaks and valleys of the U.S. economy over the last 30 years and compare movie sales.
Source 3
Title: Why Should We Stop Online Piracy?
Author: Matthew Yglesies
Summary: What is interesting about this source is while the proponents of SOPA say this bill would be needed to save the American 
economy, this blogger actually believes the bill itself would have the opposite effect. According to Yglesies, the losses from piracy are inflated and piracy could actually be beneficial to the economy, in that it reduces dead-weight loss.
Useful Information: It also draws the comparison between libraries and used books, which cost publishers money just like piracy cost production companies. The blog brings up the point that digital works are cheaper to create so it would be interesting to know if the gains made in production can make up for losses in sales.
Additional Sources:
This cite is very informative. It gives the basic information on both SOPA and PIPA and allows readers to form their own opinions. This website is extremely helpful for students who are beginning to delve into the complex and multifaceted debate of SOPA. It is however clearly biased after the initial descriptions. The cite concentrates on both the Pro and Con arguments of the bill by compiling editorials that chronicle the whole debate.
Source 1
Title: SOPA Alternative Bill Introduced in the US House of Representatives
Author: Grant Ross
Summary: The first article entitled, “SOPA Alternative Bill Introduced in the US House of Representatives” is a landmark piece of legislation that opposes this bill. The bill proposed the OPEN
act which allowed large cooperations to file complaints. “The OPEN Act would allow copyright holders to file complaints about copyright infringement at foreign websites with the U.S. International Trade Commission, which would investigate the complaints and decide whether U.S. payment processors and online advertising networks should be required to cut off funding. The cite goes on to describe the effects of the bill on Hollywood as well as the general public” (Gross). This bill is in effort to prevent rogue foreign websites from stealing Americans work.
Useful Information: The importance of this article is to understand that there are other options rather than simply imposing SOPA/PIPA. This article comes off as an article against SOPA/PIPA, but at the same time alternative and more direct solutions are being created. What this means for us is more direct targeting of “foreign, rogue websites stealing from American artists and innovators,” as stated by Darrell Issa, California Republican.
Additional Sources: This article brought up the point that there can be a end to copyright infringement, without having the entire world wide web, shut down. In the article itself, the author posted a link to The Open Act, which shows a draft and introduction to the Open Act. Sometimes, comments in articles go unnoticed, but here there was a comment put up by some user of this Youtube video. The video, ACTA Video, is a user posted video that discusses how all of the major companies that are proposing SOPA/PIPA, are in fact the ones that violated it to begin with. It is funny how this one video, devalues everything that the bill supporters say or want.
Source 2
Title: Two SOPA Co-Sponsors Drop Support for Bill
Author: Jared Newman
Summary: This article talks describes an instance of Senators dropping their support for SOPA. Co-sponsor of SOPA Representative Benjamin Quayle of Arizona has had his name withdrawn from SOPA’s Representative Lee Terry of Nebraska plans to remove his name as well. “Charles Isom, a spokesman for Terry, said the congressman was dropping support for SOPA because of negative sentiment from free speech advocates, civil rights groups and tech companies, among others. Terry had originally co-sponsored the bill because of concerns about piracy’s effect on the economy” (Newman). This article is very interesting because the fact that the co-sponsors are removing their names from the SOPA bill reflects very poorly on the bill. This article is a great reference for students who are interested in what politicians have to say about the bill.
Useful Information: What is important to realize in this article is that Newman states, “participation in anti-SOPA protests from major websites such as Wikipedia and Google will bring mainstream attention to the bill.” Our efforts in bringing attention to the negativity of these acts is what drives the lawmakers to drop their support for the bills. With more attention and awareness, the passing of the bills can be stopped permanently.
Additional Sources: Newman’s article has a lot of outside research to back up his findings. He has provided a list of SOPA’s co-sponsors, as well as basic Facts on SOPA and PIPA. Newman seems to know a lot about the topic, because he has done more than one article on the bills in his tenure.
Source 3
Title: Hollywood Disappointed with President Obama’s SOPA Stance
Author: Jared Newman
Summary: In the last article on the site Jared Newman discussed how Hollywood is not happy with President Obamas reaction to SOPA. The white House wrote “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet”. Many “talking heads” in Hollywood believed that the White House should have stayed quit about the issue or taken a neutral stance. Democrats in particular are extremely unhappy because they do not believe Obama is supporting their interest in this issue despite all the money and time they have donated to the Democratic Party and Obama.
Useful Information: By now it seems as if Newman is a very neutral writer. He is simply out there to get the facts out. This article shows how instantly support can be dropped if one does not support the bills. The movie and TV industry, being so adamant about shutting any and everything down, has not taken the time to sit and realize the problems that SOPA/PIPA will cause. Losing freedom to speech is the biggest issue right now, and we do not support the movie and TV industry for supporting that.These three sources show the different phases of this debate. The first is an article in the Washington post titled “SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act) debate: why are Google and Facebook against it ?” delves into the different sides of the debate from the perspective those affected. The second is a blog titled “SLAC colloquium examines Wikipedia’s protest of SOPA, PIPA on may 7”. It discusses the actions which the affected parties have taken to stand against the bill. The third is a journal article titled “Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet”. It petitions to it’s readers by stating the reasons the bill would be detrimental to the Internet innovation while also stating the need for alternatives to the bill. These sources explore all sides of the debate and show the actions that are being taken for or against SOPA.
Source 1
Title: SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) debate: Why are Google and Facebook against it?
Author: Beth Marlow
Summary: This article discusses both arguments pertaining to SOPA. SOPA’s critics include internet giants such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and the Consumer Electronics Association who believe the act is a ” full-on assault against lawful U.S. Internet companies.” on the other extreme is the Motion Picture Association of America, pharmaceuticals makers, media firms and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They lament over the estimated $135 billion in revenue lost each year to piracy and they believe the act is needed to protect jobs.
Useful Information: This article furthers the discussion by accessing the effect of the act on the artist themselves. while the law would protect established musicians from having their work stolen online. It would also prevent amateur remixes, covers and mash-ups of works by others because “these works would be considered copyright violations, and not only could the creator of the work be legally vulnerable, but also could the host of the content.” This is useful to the debate because it shows how this act helps established artist protect their work but inhibits the creativity of amateurs.
Further Research: this source discusses two books that have opposing views of the effect of online piracy . One titled “remix” by Lawrence Lessig which argues that copyright laws should allow amateur creativity. The other is titled“Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back.” by Robert Levine who thinks “the best way to save artists’ jobs is to strengthen copyright laws”.
Source 2
Title:Wikipedia’s protest of SOPA, PIPA on May 7
Author: Alexander Wise
Summary: Internet giant Wikipedia intended to have a black-out on their site in order to protest the bill because they believe the bill oversteps it bound and it would ” have a chilling effect on the sharing of legitimate content.”
Useful Information: just gives some insight into the symbolism of the protest sites that would be forced permanently offline by SOPA wanted to show the internet world what it would be like without their services. This is only pertinent because it shows how seriously some companies are taking this act.
Further Research: It would be interesting to find out what other internet companies are doing. This could lead to comparisons of methods for example offline protest vs lobbying.
Source 3
Title: Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet
Authors: Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt
Summary: It states the importance of the preservation of the free and innovative nature of the internet. any law which is intended to protect the artistic property from piracy must not open the door for frivolous litigation that would discourage innovation. if the proposed plan manipulates the Domain Name System it could pose a threat to cyber security. although online piracy is a major problem that cost a lot of people their jobs, the laws that combat piracy should neither impede innovation nor reduce cyber security.
Useful Information: This journal explicitly explores and explains the risk that come with SOPA. This is paramount to the topic at hand because it paints a big picture of the consequences of SOPA. It also considers the need for an act such as SOPA. finally it suggests a middle-ground solution.
“Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders”
SOPA is one of the most controversial topics of 2012. Social Media has become such a large part of our society that the idea of having it taken away is incredible strange and provokes a great deal of feelings and concerns with people. The main reason why SOPA may be beneficial is because it would stop people from being able to take material that is not theirs and upload it to their websites or web pages. This would eliminate all plagiarizing issues online. If this bill is passes all large enterprises will be able to shut down any website they find threatening in anyway. The site would then be on their own to defend their innocence. SOPA also calls for the removal or any and all pictures, videos and posts that may infringe on any types of copyrights. Social Media is all about exchanging picture and videos and ideas via the Internet.
By sharing something in the media people are able to debate and developed thoughts and opinions that will help shape our country. Gavin Polone of NY magazine believes that SOPA is a good idea however it was not exacted well. “I have funded two films with my own money and am considering doing a third. Most of the people working on those films were not rich people, but rather middle-class craftsmen who make high-five-figure to low-six-figure sums per year. My decision on whether to fund another movie, thereby employing more people, will be based on whether or not I get my money back on the last two, and my prospects for making money on another. If a film of mine is put on a file-sharing site like Pirate Bay, Movieberry, and Newsbin2, and is then downloaded to potential customers, I lose revenue. Nobody is going to pay to see a movie in a theater, rent a DVD, or legitimately download or stream a movie once they already have it from a free pirate site” (Polone). Although Mr. Polone has a valid point what he fails to recognize is that there are already laws that keep these websites at bay however SOPA is looking to take down all social media websites onto of pirate websites. If SOPA was isolated and only targeted a certain part of internet violations then it would be more affective however as of now it is just going to be extremely protested and the resistance is not worth the benefits. The law is made by old men and women whom are not exposed to the Internet and all the benefits of sites such as Twitter, Yahoo, Google and Facebook. With a different outlook SOPA could make the internet a better and more effective tool however as of now the bill, if passed, will just be an ineffective disaster.
See More: Pro-SOPA Folds Push Fact-Challenged Op-Eds, The Only Argument on the Internet in Favor of SOPA
It’s 8am and my alarm clock shrills. I open my eyes however my brain does not wake up for at least another 10 minutes. When I finally emerge out of my sleepy fog, I pick up my phone and begin my morning browse through the social networks. First I check Facebook to see if anything eventful has happened with my friends in the midst of my slumber. After briefly browsing, I click the tiny blue icon and open myself up to the world of twitter. As I scrawl through my feed I become updated on world news and local news. It is my own digital newspaper separated into neat catagories. Lastly with a quick check of my gmail, my morning ritual is complete. This whole process takes no more then 5 minutes however in those few minutes I have acquired the same knowledge that I would receive watching the news for an hour. Social Networking is todays main form of communication. Everyday millions of people log onto Facebook and Twitter, post pictures and talk with friends, relatives, and business partners. Social Networking is no longer just for teeny boppers with self takes and college students putting up their drunken pictures from their weekend, it has become a way for professionals to connect and people to express them-selves. 
Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) is looking to shut down all social networking cites. Some affects of SOPA would be that “Social media sharing of photos, videos, music and written content could be shut down by shutting down the social networks that host the shared content. (and) “Blog syndication sites could be shut down by a single violation from one of their source feeds” (McTigue). This bill is ill-constructed and punishes the general public instead of actual copyright violators. This bill will cripple a large amount of people and businesses as well as allowing blogs such as this to be removed. In theory the idea of SOPA and PIPA are beneficial. People who Pirate material should have consequences, however these bills do not protect from these people, they are hurting people such as small businesses owners who use social media to advertise and promote themselves.
The Potential Impact of SOPA/PIPA on Content Marketing
Image: Worst Thing About Censorship
There are those in support of SOPA, and then of course, there are those who are not. From a Pro SOPA website titled under, Why Most Investors Should Support SOPA there are the obvious reasons for why such industries would want to support stopping online piracy. “The exact cost of online piracy is impossible to measure. The Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, claims piracy costs the music industry alone billions of dollars a year globally.” Take that first sentence alone, “the exact cost of piracy is impossible to measure;” my question is where are they coming up with these estimates of ‘billions of dollars?’ To continue, “From 1999 to 2009, the RIAA claims US music sales dropped 47%. From 2006 to 2011, the music industry saw DVD sales decline by 25%. Software sales have also been down or flat in recent years. While not all of this can be attributed to online piracy, it has certainly been a factor.” “Sales” they are claiming here are only from online piracy. But the RIAA has other forms of sales from such as live artists performing at different revenues and other promotions generating big numbers in sales. In addition, this same article notes that the decline isn’t 100% contributed to piracy, to quote again “While not all of this can be attributed to online piracy.”
In addition, according the RIAA website, in response to “What is the scope of the problem?” it claims “The music industry, while enormous in its economic, cultural and personal impact, is by business standards relatively small…The successful partnership between a music label and a global superstar – and the revenue generated – finances the investment in discovering, developing and promoting the next new artist. Without that revolving door of investment and revenue, the ability to bring the next generation of artists to the marketplace is diminished.” However, the music industry gross some of the highest incomes, just take a look around you; artists such as Kanye West profited in one year with $5,190,655.00. Madonna totaled $58,000,000.00 in sales for one year according to Pay Wizard. Clearly, SOPA is being supported by industries that are “hurting.”
See More: What is Online Piracy?
According to this pro-SOPA commercial that was aired during the Chris Matthews show on MSNBC, it was stated that SOPA is something that must be enacted. One of the main arguments in the commercial was, “American creativity and innovation are under attack. Every day foreign criminals use illegal websites to steal American products. They steal our ideas and put Americans out of work.” This argument makes absolutely no sense. The commercial is arguing that foreign criminals are the ones who are stealing American ideas and putting them out of work. First of all, they could have made their argument much stronger by saying that people across the entire world, including Americans, are benefiting off products that they should be paying for. Regardless, this is still not a strong argument for why SOPA should be passed.
In today’s technological savvy society, one could argue that any technological advancement would also be taking away American jobs. Therefore, are those people in favor of this video also asking for all technological advances to stop as well? I would like to think that no one in America would ever want to put a stop to innovation and developing new advancements, as these very things are what this country has thrived on for the past 200+ years. In addition, all of these technological advances will initially take away people’s jobs, while simultaneously helping out the rest of the country in different areas. For example, the creation of automated customer service lines has put many Americans out of jobs. However, it should be noted that these automated service lines are saving an incredible amount of time for people that would typically be put on hold if actual people had been working for these customers. Overall, I found this commercial to be ineffective. To argue that SOPA should be passed because foreign criminals use illegal websites and threaten American jobs seems like more of a stretch than thoughtful argument to me.
Why should you be interested in being against the Stop Online Piracy Act? Well, there is a list of reasons why, but right now were just going to focus on one crucial point; it violates our rights as citizens of the United States under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Just to refresh some of you readers, the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” according to Law Cornell The First Amendment. In laymen’s terms, its violates our rights in terms of free speech on the Internet, therefore putting users of any social media sites and such under censorship and potentially infringed upon the whole. Below are a few critical points as to how SOPA directly violates the First Amendment as states in the article Would Sopa & Pipa Violate the First Amendment?
- The Acts amount to impermissible “prior restraint” of speech, because they allow private parties to suppress speech without a judicial hearing and due process of law.
- The definition of a website “dedicated to the theft of US property” is impermissibly vague, and allows copyright owners to target entire sites when only a small portion of them contains infringing material.
- The burden placed on websites to police their own content, under threat of strict liability for infringing content found there, will chill their exercise of free speech rights.
- The sweeping remedies authorized by the Acts are so broad that they will inevitably affect “large swaths” of legitimate speech as well.
- The Acts authorize the US Attorney General to blacklist sites suspected of infringement, under a process that is unlikely to ever afford most sites a realistic chance of defending themselves. US citizens would then be deprived of information that they have a First Amendment right to access.
To quickly summarize those points, SOPA allows for the government to easily blacklist a website under its broad terms that are thought to contain any information thought to “belong” to the United States. This gives government access to censorship any website thought to have such content and be easily removed. The First Amendment alone is argument enough that SOPA cannot be validated.
Also, according to Harvard Law Professor Larry Trive in How Sopa Violates the First Amendment, “the notice-and-termination procedure of Section 103(a) runs afoul of the “prior restraint” doctrine, because it delegates to a private party the power to suppress speech without prior notice and a judicial hearing. This provision of the bill would give complaining parties the power to stop online advertisers and credit card processors from doing business with a website, merely by filing a unilateral notice accusing the site of being “dedicated to theft of U.S. property” – even if no court has actually found any infringement.” All in all, the First Amendment isn’t even taken into consideration. An entire website is able to be banned based on what is being advertised (that’s our free speech).
For my last point in accordance to the First Amendment and living in the United States, we can sometimes take that for granted. But here in America, land of the free, we pride ourselves on our rights. Now, lets focus of Communistic China where censorship of the Internet is already in place. In a New York Times article, Internet Censorship in China, “The [Chinese] government’s computers intercept incoming data and compare it against an ever-changing list of banned keywords or Web sites, screening out even more information. The motive is often obvious: Since late 2010, the censors have prevented Google searches of the English word “freedom.” If we allow SOPA, we allow ourselves in America to be censored. We do not know the limits that the government could implement, but why even give them the chance.
The fact that we are able to create this blog, write our own posts, be able to speak at free will is all justified in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Stop SOPA.
If SOPA were to be passed, there is a likelihood that search engines would be taken off of the Internet. Regardless of the other implications that SOPA might cause, search engines are one of the most useful devices for anyone trying to use the Internet. It allows its users to access hundreds of websites on any given topic in a matter of seconds. I will never tell you that I do not think that websites that break copyright laws should not be removed from the Internet. However, I do not see why search engines should be removed just because they link users to websites that are breaking these laws. A simple solution to this problem would be to focus on removing these websites that are breaking laws and not try and find an easy way out by taking down all search engines. By removing search engines, the government is not fixing any of the problems because all of these websites would still be available on the Internet.
As a college student, I would like to argue that we would be most affected if search engines were to be removed from the Internet. Any time a college student is trying to work on research papers or just simply looking something up on the Internet, they begin their searches by using websites such as Google or Yahoo. After speaking with dozens of my friends on this topic, they agree that they would be mortified if they would not be able to minimize the amount of time trying to find websites on a certain topic by just using a search engine. The benefit of these search engines is that it saves the users an incredible amount of time by not having to find individual websites on their topics. Instead, it allows the users to spend extra time researching their topic further with all of the time they saved from using a search engine to find their data. Now a day, when everything in technology moves as quickly as it does, people especially college students, need the ability to have search engines to keep up with the expectations of such a fast learning rate. In addition, besides certain websites like Facebook or Twitter, that would most likely be removed by SOPA anyways, people do not know other website URL’s without the use of these search engines. According to the Forbes article, How SOPA And PIPA Would Unfairly Burden Businesses, they stated, “search engines (and, probably URL shorteners and anyone with a search box) are required to drop your links from their results, ad networks stop serving you (or your ads), and your payment provider stops working with you.” All of these issues that SOPA would cause would once again hinder the ability to utilize these search engines to their fullest potential. I could honesty say that if I was assigned a project on something as simple as “is the earth round” I would not know how to research this topic without the use of these important search engines. I am concerned that the level of academics and the willing to want to continue learning new information as a college student would go down if information was not as readable and accessible as it is today. It bothers me that the government does not realize the future implications that will occur if they follow through with this act. It is even worse if they do realize the impact SOPA could have on college students but choose to ignore and follow through after all of these warnings.
Censorship laws are not just a rumor. We have grown up to the World Wide Web and its easy accessibility, so to even think about a restricted Internet, is just unreal. Well, it’s time to start taking it seriously. SOPA/PIPA are two of the censorship laws that have been causing great steam, especially in recent news. SOPA is a House Bill and PIPA is a Senate bill. SOPA probably won’t be passed, but PIPA might. Even though one has a higher chance of not passing, it doesn’t mean it is 100%. By raising awareness here, we can show the public how these laws can affect so many aspects of our current life.
There are three main aspects as to how censorship laws, specifically SOPA/PIPA, are detrimental to students across the country are as follows; breaks the First Amendment, blocks our usage of search engines, and blocks the “oh so important’ social networking sites that we live off of.
So how is this possible? SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, Protect IP Act, both have aims to stop “foreign-based websites that sell pirated movies, music and other products,” a stated in The Wall Street Journal online, in an article “What is SOPA Anyway? A Guide to Understanding the Online Piracy Bill,” by Amy Schatz. Now, we understand that this is an issue, but this may be an issue of too much power, rather than the right power. By being able to shut down any website that uploads pirated content, we are allowing courts to have the power to shut down Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites that allow their users to upload content freely. They would also block websites and direct people away from search engines that show any pirated content or “promote” any copy infringement.
We, as students, are highly affected by all this. How we learn, how we communicate, and how we collaborate all happens on the internet. By allowing these laws to be passed, we are giving the government the OK to limit our abilities. They will hold our hands behind our backs as we search the web and go to search engines and social networking sites, if they haven’t been shut down already.
image: Anti SOPA Image
What is SOPA Anyway? A Guide to Understanding the Online Piracy Bill
Students Against Censorship 
