WIkipedia shuts down

Today, some of the most visited websites in the US will be "blacked out" to raise awareness of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to bring the Stop Online Piracy Act to a vote on Jan. 24, 2012. In anticipation of this vote, many websites, including Wikipedia will be taking their content offline for the entire day of January 18. Sites such as Google will also participate in protests by posting a link on the Google homepage to let users know about the company's opposition to the Act.

The intent of the Stop Online Piracy Act is to prevent illegal downloading and copyright infringements through websites such as The Pirate Bay and other downloading sites. However, due to the vague wording in the bill, many search engines and websites that host user content could be crippled by guidelines contained in the bill.

One good way to summarize the danger of the Stop Online Piracy Act is found on Reddit.com's administrative blog. "SOPA and PROTECT IP contain no provisions to actually remove copyrighted content, but rather focus on the censorship of links to entire domains," according to the blog.

This is by no means a full summary of the Stop Online Piracy Act, but it hopefully will raise awareness. For a full summary of the bill, check out our article in the Dec. 7, 2011 issue of Prospectus News written by Buster Bytes, which can be found online at http://goo.gl/iy6Ee. It is always important to do your own research. For more information about the Act, please visit the following websites:

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:

Or, just run a quick Google search for the Stop Online Piracy Act to find out the latest on the Act and its affect on our country.