A furious battle is taking place in Congress about the future of the Internet. Lawmakers are trying to figure out what rules should govern the Wild West of the Web—with issues ranging from cyberbullying to police access to private social network pages. Like many aspects of our lives, though, the battle has now gone viral, with Wikipedia shutting down most of its English site for 24 hours in protest against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
The reach of SOPA is broad and the penalties drastic. Let’s say I post a home video of my family on YouTube and there is a Velvet Elvis on the living room wall behind me. Under SOPA, since the Elvis image is copyrighted, the U.S. Attorney General could step in and shut down all of YouTube because of my transgression. The AG could force all search engines to pretend YouTube never existed and not link to it. And I might even go to prison for five years, if I’ve shot ten home videos in the room in front of the Velvet Elvis or if, in my videos, my CD player was playing my favorite songs.
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Lori AndrewsLori is a law professor and the author of I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND I SAW WHAT YOU DID: SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THE DEATH OF PRIVACY. Sign up for Lori's newsletter.
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