How SOPA Affects Legal Internet Marketers
Written by: Tanya Gonzalez
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is still not out of our hair yet. The act claims internet piracy will be diminished, but it seems as though it will do more harm than good. When examined closely, the real victims of SOPA are not black hat marketers or pirates, it’s business that engage in legal internet marketing practices and web surfers in general.
SOPA was initially proposed as a way to stop online piracy. The act expands the authority of the government to take down and censor certain content that is seen as malicious or illegal. In reality, the criteria for taking down sites is pretty loose, and this means that several businesses that rely heavily on their legal internet marketing campaigns could see the end of their era.
Among those who would be affected by SOPA are businesses with websites, entrepreneurs, content writers, publishers, legal internet marketing agencies, and other similar businesses – basically the majority of the working population.
Search engines such as Google have been working hard to prevent piracy on their own. Through algorithm changes and general rules that would cause a pirate to get taken off the web, the internet has been running pretty darn well without the need for government interference.
Although the fundamental aim of the bill is to stop and prevent piracy – and who wouldn’t want that? – the extent of its reach will harm innocent web sites and users around the country. A copyrighter can claim that your website contains plagiarized content and a judge could automatically shut your site down, without further investigation. You would pretty much get black listed and search engines would remove you from their listings and you can of course say goodbye to e-commerce because payment processing companies would not be allowed to work with you.
What’s worse is that the alleged plagiarized content may not even pertain to the actual site. Any comment that is left on your site that an authority deems as plagiarized or illegal in some shape or form will penalize your entire site, even if you had nothing to do with it.
The internet is the vastest mode of communication we have in the world. Censoring it is akin to censoring freedom. If you are against SOPA and what it stands for, fight for your rights and protest against the bill today.
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