Why sopa should not pass

The answer is both — meaning both Republicans and Democrats are showing overwhelming support for these proposed pieces of legislation. Patrick Leahy D — Vt. The White House has voiced its concerns about the legislation, but does agree that some kind of anti-piracy law is needed to protect American companies. Christopher Dodd D — Conn.

The bills allow the U. Department of Justice as well as copyright holders to seek out and prosecute foreign sites that commit acts of piracy. The DOJ needs a court order before it can proceed, which it can obtain if the site in question is operated by an organization outside of the U.

Once a court order has been served, there are three main tools these bills give the DOJ and copyright holders for blocking websites. Authors of both bills have wavered on their stance when it comes to DNS blocking.

The second method of blocking involves mandating that major search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo de-index an accused site from their search results. And finally, the third way prohibits any site accused of piracy from doing business with other services, such as PayPal or any advertising platform. The same is true for ad networks. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent.

You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Necessary Necessary. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website.

But tech companies, who largely oppose the bills, mobilized their users to speak out. Google GOOG , Fortune drew more than 7 million signatures for a petition that it linked on its highly trafficked homepage. The bills lost some of their Congressional backers as a result of the backlash. One major tenet of the original SOPA legislation has already been removed. As originally written, SOPA would have required Internet service providers ISPs to block access to sites that law enforcement officials deemed pirate sites.

But the White House said its analysis of the original legislation's technical provisions "suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity," and that it wouldn't support legislation that mandates manipulating the Internet's technical architecture.

What are the alternatives? 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.