What is SOPA?

Lately, SOPA issue has stormed the cyber world, and many people discuss about it either online or offline. Do you know what is SOPA and what its effect toward global internet users? SOPA is “STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT." I will try to explain the term with the simplest words. Before that let’s see the SOPA definition taken from the legitimate sources.

SOURCE: H.R. 3261, STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT; House Judiciary Committee; October 26, 2011

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act. (SOURCE)

SOURCE: Lifehacker.com

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act puts power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language vague enough to encompass sites you use every day, like Twitter and Facebook, making SOPA a serious problem.

STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT

To simplify it, SOPA tries to declare war against piracy online. SOPA doesn’t really care whether you’re piracy supporters or against piracy. It allows companies to block DOMAIN names of web sites that encourage copyright infringement.

For example, if Zetta Tips website has been suspected for copyright violence, this domain could be blocked. Thus, you cannot visit this site by typing https://www.zettatips.com in your web browser address bar.

Although you cannot access it via the domain name, you can access Zetta Tips by knowing its numeric IP address, which is 216.239.36.21. Paste this IP address on the address bar of your web browser, and you still can browse through the Zetta Tips website happily.

There is a simplest technique to know the numeric IP address of the certain website. Open your command prompt (WINDOWS only) and type “ping zettatips.com”. Refer the screenshot below:

You can change the “zettatips.com” with any websites. You need to remove “https://www”. What if SOPA successfully implemented? The answer is easy, it will give trouble to the websites such as GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, YOUTUBE, TUMBLR and many more, because it can censor any web sites capable of providing its users with the means of promoting pirated content or allowing the process. In conclusion, you will have a hard time to feel the freedom by using the internet.