It's a dramatic response to the Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, a pair of bills backed by the motion picture and recording industries that are intended to eliminate theft online once and for all.
Simply put, S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights. Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs, according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms.
"There are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," Google spokeswoman Samantha Smith told FoxNews.com on Tuesday. The site joined Wikipedia by presenting readers with a black bar over its logo, and other websites have prominent SOPA protest content posted. But the online encyclopedia's blackout is a line-in-the-sand action -- and it isn't sitting well with some of its volunteer editors. ~Fox News
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