EPTOR
the Protect IP Act of 2011
More commonly know as PIPA, or in senate it is referred to as Senate Bill 968 (S.968). Senate Bill 968 was proposed on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy (Vermont). In the situation that a website posts meterial that another company or website has a copy write ownership to, PIPA would implement a system to shut down the website infringing on the copy write. This system would give the Attorney General (AG) and the Justice Department then authority to take action against any infringing websites. This also allows the company whose intellectual property is being stolen to take legal action against the website and/or it's owners (if they have a US address).
It doesn't sound that unreasonable to take legal action against someone stealing your ideas, but what qualifies a website as infringing on intellectual property? Any website whose only significant purpose is the theft of another's intellectual property is considered to be infringing on the Protect IP Act. I emphasize significance because it is a subjective term. It is at the AG's discretion as to what is significant or insignificant; meaning that many websites could be shut down on based on opinion.
As I mentioned earlier the Attorney General is given the authority to take action against a website. This means that it does not require the owner of the intellectual property to instigate action against an infringing website. A website can be infringing PIPA and the AG has the authority to take action even if the owner does not want to. The only requirement is that the owner of the intellectual property is given notification of the infringement and has the opportunity to sue the website, or owners.
The result of the AG taking action against a website is that the domain/IP gets blocked. PIPA requires that any US based online directories, indexes, and search engines to block the infringing site so that it cannot be found through their database. This includes companies like google (which is used worldwide and the website would be blocked for everyone, not just in the US). This would be done at the expense of the company. It is expected that if PIPA passed then the American government would spend a minimum of 47 million through 2016. This money would be put towards the actual building and implementation of the PIPA system, as well as hiring and training 48 staff members.
Senate bill 968 was officially supported by 83 organizations, such as: Nintendo, Independent Film & Television Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America, Walmart, Microsoft, Xerox Corporation, CBS Corporation, Disney, and more.
73 notable companies opposed S.968: Google, Yahoo, Minecraft, Reddit, Visa, Twitter, Facebook, Major League Gaming, Greenpeace International… to name a few. If you would like a full list of the companies supporting/opposing as well as the Senators for/against, you can see it HERE.
Initially senate was expected to vote on PIPA in 2011, but the Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden's adamant opposition pushed the vote back to January 2012. On January 18, 2012 websites like Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit protested PIPA and it's companion bill SOPA by participating in an internet "blackout". Google appeared with a censored sign over the google logo, Reddit shut down for 12 hours, and English Wikipedia blacked-out for 24 hours. It is because of this protest and the immense upheaval of the internet community that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada) announced the indefinite postponement of Senate Bill 968.
Many of you are familiar with SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), which is very similar to PIPA and considered to be a companion bill. I will be posting more about SOPA, how it differed from PIPA and what is happening with SOPA now/in the future. I hope that this was informative for anyone curious about what PIPA was. I tried my best to keep things simple and I hope that my information was clear and accurate. This is how i understood the bill, if you know any other information or have detected any inaccuracies please let me know!
Please keep this in mind: just because PIPA has been indefinitely postponed does not mean that we will not see any similar bills in the future. Senator Leahy, who proposed PIPA, also brought COICA (the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act(Senate Bill 3804)) to the Senate floor on September 20, 2010. I would not be surprised if Senator Leahy brought another revision of the same bill (under a new name) to Senate sometime this year.
What is important to remember is that the internet is a force to be reckoned with, and everyone who contacted their representatives to voice their opinion on PIPA/SOPA helped shut these bills down. That is something we should all be immensely proud of and I only wish I could have done more as a non-US citizen.
Thanks for reading,
<3 Zenobia
