Understanding SOPA via Rage

Hope you enjoyed my first ever Rage comic! :)

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So I woke up today only to find that the Twitter-sphere was trending on SOPA & PIPA.

A couple months ago I wrote a short post and joined the protest against SOPA by including a censorship strip over the AdamTam.com banner.

For those still in the dark, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill to combat piracy. Fair enough – with the amount of pirated content that goes around, I’m not against the means of creating an anti-piracy law to protect those who work hard to distribute their skills.

The issue at hand is that the written bill is vaguely broad.

For example under the legislation, SOPA lays out the definition for a “foreign infringing site” as one where “the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under [provisions relating to counterfeiting and copyright infringement].” The problematic word is facilitating, as it opens the door to condemning sites that simply link to other sites.

There are many various articles written all over the net if you want to get more in depth at what this bill really means.

Surfing the internet this morning (which may not be possible soon!), I found a couple clever illustrations (not created by me) that I would like to share. I hope it helps you clarify the situation, even if just a little!