SOPA: censorship of the web

"SOPA: Is Congress Pushing Web Censorship?" PC Magazine Online 16 Nov. 2011. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 18 Aug. 2012. In the winter of 2012, the U.S. government tried to pass a bill called the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) which would have shut down web sites that show copyrighted material without permission. At first, this seems like a good idea because it would stop people from steeling copyrighted material such as songs and videos, but it would also close down many web businesses such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter where people can post copyrighted material without the company's permission. For example, if a business uses PayPal, someone could report that to PayPal and have that web site removed because that sight uses their logo and name. This would cause the loss of thousands of jobs in the U.S. setting back our economy back even farther than it already is. According to Katherine Oyama, who is on the copyright policy council of Google, " the bill sets a precedent in favor of Internet censorship and could jeopardize our nation's cybersecurity. [SOPA] poses a serious threat to our industry's continued track record of innovation and job-creation." There is also the issue of whether or not this would be considered censorship of the internet which would conflict with U.S. citizen's first amendment rights of freedom of speech. According to Google's Eric Schmidt, "There's a bill that would require (Internet service