Republicans amend SOPA proposal after criticism

Lately, there has been a lot of criticism on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the new anti-piracy legislation in the United States. Many journalists and experts urge the U.S. government to reconsider this controversial proposal. This week, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, threatened to take down his website as a protest against SOPA.In an effort to increase the probability of the SOPA draft legislation to be endorsed by the House of Representatives,, Republican Lamar Smith has announced some amendments to the SOPA proposal.

The SOPA proposal prescribes extensive measures to fight Internet piracy. For example, American and foreign piracy websites may be blocked, without the interference of a judge, according to the current text.

The newly amended version now does prescribe review by a judge before rightsholders may block a piracy website. Also, SOPA will only be applicable to foreign piracy websites and Internet service providers can no longer be forced by the American government to adjust DNS-data, although a request to do so is still allowed.

Despite this new version, criticism remains strong. The American attorney Sherwin Siy said that SOPA will continue to encourage DNS blocking and filtering, which may limit Internet freedom.

References: Tweakers , Zdnet, SOLV

By: Deniece Teterissa