S.O.P.A stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. It is a law that has been proposed by the
If the law did go ahead, companies that owned the content would be able to get court orders to force broadband providers to block the websites distributing their copy-right content. And by streaming the content, you could receive a penalty of up to 5 years in prison, which is longer than Michael Jackson's doctor got for killing him!
User-content websites such as YouTube and Wikipedia would be greatly affected: they would become shut down if this becomes law.
What are its objectives?
S.O.P.A basically aims to stop people from infringing copy-right content. It is highly supported by firms such as publishers and film studios who make the content which is being distributed, as it is these companies that are loosing out on money.
Technology firms such as Google and Facebook are opposed to S.O.P.A as they rely on users being able to freely share information.
Do I agree with S.O.P.A?
Personally, I do not. I understand that piracy does happen and it is very vast in terms of the internet, but I in no way think that something as simple as S.O.P.A could stop it.
The freedom in using the internet which we have been given has broadened our lives in many different ways. We can now easily upload our own videos to YouTube in a very short period of time, locate friends from school that we haven't seen in years in seconds, find everything we'd possibly want to know about a topic by typing a phrase in Wikipedia apposed to going to the library or getting out a dictionary and SO much more. The benefits for us as the consumers of the internet have been endless. It has also made the internet much more popular, if things were to go back to the way they were before the content that is currently available wasn't, then much less time would be spent on the internet and many companies would not be able to survive, many jobs would be lost, and there would be world-wide loss for everyone - which is not beneficial in this economic climate.
Although people do watch pirated movies online for free, I do not feel that this is a real loss to the film producers. It is likely that these people who are watching the movies were never going to pay to watch the film in the first place, so although they are getting the movie for free which is not acceptable, the film industry is not losing out by a large margin.
There are a vast majority of films available to watch online, but none of which are a quality any where near as high as that if they were being viewed in a cinema or on DVD. So these methods of watching film still have major advantages over watching them online and this is how the majority of people will choose to watch the film.
People may watch a movie online or a clip of the movie just to be sure that it is something that they are going to like. With times getting harder, we aren’t all as keen to splash out and take a risk on something that we may not even like. It could be that after watching part of the film, the person may be more likely to purchase it on DVD for the quality.
Distribution of other content such as promotional material for TV shows, films etc either made personally by people or original trailers posted on YouTube for example, can surely only promote such shows etc and improve their views and in turn profit? However if the S.O.P.A laws did go ahead, a personally made video to promote Doctor Who using content or imagery from the series, would be banned from posting!
It is hard to distinguish a line between what we want people to stop doing, what we want them to continue doing and to what extent.
Another issue is the fact that we cannot be sure what exactly would happen if S.O.P.A did become law. Would everyone still use the internet to the same extent? Would our overall knowledge decrease from lack of resources to obtain information? Would business profits plummet? Would the film industries profit actually increase? So much is unknown, and it is such a fragile and difficult situation that I think that S.O.P.A should not go ahead simply because it would cause more damage than benefits!
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