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                        Internet Giants Consider Blackout To Protest SOPA
Haven’t heard about SOPA? It’s no wonder, since the mainstream media has been curiously silent on the issue. Maybe it’s because most of the big news outlets are owned by companies supporting SOPA.  Things will really get interesting if the “nuclear option” is implemented where the likes of Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Ebay, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Mozilla, Twitter, and PayPal “go simultaneously dark” to join them in protest of the bill.
                                                 A quick summary of SOPA
The SOPA bill aims to protect American intellectual property, which is certainly justifiable given the amount of pirated material on the internet. It’s the form that this protection takes that is getting internet companies and their users in a tizzy. SOPA would establish a system for taking down websites (the language is directed toward “rogue” foreign sites) that the U.S. Justice Department determines to be dedicated to copyright infringement. The DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site, without a court hearing or a trial. Opponents claim that the bill violates the First Amendment, compromises internet security, and threatens technology innovation. The fear is that SOPA could evolve into a general tool for internet censorship – The Great Firewall of America.

Popular websites and internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and AOL are considering a temporary shutdown in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA - a controversial bill that has critics and supporters battling each other in Congress before it even reaches the House floor."There have been some serious discussions about that," Markham Erickson, head of the NetCoalition trade association told CNET. "It has never happened before." NetCoalition represents companies such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and Wikipedia and was founded, in part, to stop the passage of SOPA and its senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. "Clearly, what happened with the PIPA companion bill, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House at the end of 2011 ignited the Internet community like never before," Erickson said in a statement. The blackout option is receiving support from many users who depend on the services of the web giants considering the blackout.  "An 'internet blackout' would obviously be both drastic and unprecedented," Erickson said in a statement. The proposed blackout comes after fierce debate in the House Judiciary Committee just before Christmas, with supporters of the bill refusing to hear any expert input on the subject, and voting along party lines. Under the proposed bill, entities like search engines, payment systems and advertisers would have to stop payments, advertising and business with potentially infringing websites or face prosecution. Also, it would expand criminal offenses to anyone who not only downloads copyright material, or "pirating," but anyone who streams copyright material.That means uploading a video of your child singing along to their favorite song to YouTube could potentially be considered illegal use of copyright material, since you are streaming a copyrighted song for others to view.  Copyright holders, such as Viacom or Disney, would ultimately have the power, and be able to take down offending websites by notifying the Attorney General. Penalties would be extended to service providers if action is not taken against the website. 
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