Can someone please explain about SOPA?

[Chris]

I don't know what the hell is going on but it must be something big.
I'm in the UK and over here there is no talk about SOPA on the news or in the papers.
But online everyone is going crazy, every trending topic on Twitter is about SOPA,
and how Facebook Twitter and Wikipedia could be shut down. Can someone please
tell me three things.

1. Who or what is SOPA.

2. Why are they threatening to shut down loads of popular websites

3. Could the whole internet be shut down any minute.

[mrclod]

Stop Online Piracy Act.

It is legislation in the US Congress to help regulate music and dvd piracy. The problem is that amount of power that it provides to be able to shutdown websites, even though they are not supplying the pirated music, software or movie.

[Chris]

SOPA (and PIPA) are laws pending in the US Congress. They would put the responsibility of policing copyrighted material on owners of websites. Therefore anyone who posts a link to copyrighted material on sites like Wikipedia or Yahoo! could make those sites liable for the poster's actions. As a result, these sites would have to radically change in order to stay legal. It is a classic case of unintended consequences.

The internet would not be shut down, but it would no longer be open.

The good news is that some of the legislators who support it have come out and publicly announced that more work needs to be done, which is a precursor to the bill collapsing.