SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 NEWS) - Friday House and Senate leaders announce they’re postponing the Stop Online Piracy Act, dubbed "SOPA," and the Protect IP Act dubbed "PIPA." This comes after several lawmakers flipped their position on the bills in the wake of online and offline protests like hactivist group “Anonymous,” which shut down the websites to the Department of Justice, the Universal music group and several others.
If you were surfing the web Thursday you could have seen Google’s homepage with a black bar over the banner or Wikipedia and Craigslist dark; websites using the internet as a megaphone to voice their discontent with the sweeping legislation.
Jessica Lawrence, New York Tech Meetup said, “Although we really do believe that copyrighted material should be protected from piracy, these two bills are too overreaching.”
Internet advocate, Chris Koogler said, “It appears to be censorship and monitoring…deciding what goes on the internet which is very scary for me."
The bills are intended to strengthen protections against copyright infringement and intellectual property theft with the primary targets being sites overseas. But with too broad of a legislative brush, some worry about the protection of the public's rights.
Taylor Jolley works with computers. He said the legislation would control the flow of information. Jolley said, “Basically you turn into Germany, Nazi Germany.”
Koogler adds, “I think this just seems like a sneaky way to control what’s going on and I for one don’t feel like I need to be controlled.”
Even the co-sponsor of the Senate bill Orrin Hatch withdrew his support saying quote, "Rushing something with such potential for far -reaching consequences is something I cannot support."
