SOPA paradox: To pirate a song of Michael Jackson but risking a prison sentence bigger than that of his killer

SOPA bill was dropped in the U.S. Congress after largest online protest


Eight of the leading supporters of the anti-piracy law (aka SOPA) which was proposed in the United States senate, withdrew their support for it after a day strongly marked by protests. Among the 8 politicians, there were also two initiators of the law: Florida’s Marco Rubio and Missouri’s Roy Blunt.

Last Wednesday, Wikipedia, WordPress, Reddit and other proeminent websites, went dark in an unprecedented online protest against SOPA and PIPA bills, which would have totally changed the internet giants.

Google was also (partially) involved in protests that gathered besides corporations, an incredible number of ordinary users. “If you dare to download a copyrighted song of Michael Jackson, you risk a 5-year prison term, which is more than the sentence “granted” to the doctor who killed him.”

MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), described the protest as irresponsible and a stunt. MPAA is led by former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, the main advocate of the entertainment industry (e.g. Hollywood) in this scandal. So PIPA and SOPA are laws against online piracy, particularly illegal copying of movies and music.

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Interests, corruption?
Techdirt.com website revealed also the possible corruption behind this anti-piracy scandal. According to the site, Chris Dodd popped up on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation… or else:
“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”

SOPA rotten from the start?
When thinking of an anti-piracy bill, the first thing which comes to my mind are the file-sharing websites (Megaupload.com, Bittorrent.com, Piratebay.org, etc). Therefore these web domains must normally be the main target of the law, but amazingly, regarding the way SOPA was written, these websites would have remained untouchable. Why? Just because SOPA focused only on foreign websites (which would infringe the online copyrighted materials). But .com and .org are considered domestic domains as they are managed by U.S. registration organizations and in consequence Piratebay.org or .com would have nicely stayed outside SOPA’s authority. Now I am left wondering: Who was going to be targeted by PIPA/SOPA? The bloggers? The Chinese people?