Does the SOPA act have the power to turn off Google and YouTube?

It is true the SOPA Act has been post-poned; however, Harry Reid is going to resubmit the Act very soon. I believe if we as citizens of the USA allow our government to restrict the internet in any way, we will definately lose our freedom of speech as we know it today. There are many many cities today in the USA that prohibit certain lauguage in public - case in point, In a small city Sheboygan, WI, a man was with his child unloading a boat or loading a boat and the man apparently became angry and cursed. A unknown lady and her child (14 yrs old) was in the area and over heard his word, she reported him to the authorities and he was finded for disorderly conduct. So if we continue to allow others to dictate to us what we can and cant not say in public (providing its not a gross negligence of disturbance) we will continue to lose our freedoms. All adults and children should be detered from inappropriate words towards others. However, who is to decide what is appropriate or not? While stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war I had seen women beaten because they had spoke without permission. Is this what we are leading to here? Just a thought

haha…. now you sound like my Government class. But I hear ya. I’m all against SOPA and the government limiting what we do more than they already have. I understand the necessity of government interference, but very limited

Yes and no.

The language used in SOPA and PIPA (i.e. the Senate version) is extremely vague - which means it’s ripe for abuse. For example (I’m not sure if the latest amendments use this language) you or your site can be found guilty of wrongdoing and have action taken against if the”core functionality” of your site is found to “enable or facilitate infringement.” That means that if your site has any links at all to piracy or piracy-related websites (i.e. facilitating infringement) it can be shut down (under SOPA) or be taken to court (PIPA). It’s basically punishing the wrong people - the pirates get away scot-free and the sites with little wrongdoing suffer.

So, technically speaking, Google, Youtube, Facebook etc. can be shut down under SOPA, or be prosecuted under PIPA. If the law is passed, will they? Maybe not - like AIG and the automobile companies in 2008, I’d say they are too big to fail, shutting them down would incite a lot of public protest. The real problem IMO is what will happen to the next Google, or the new Facebook. Internet startups even remotely related to piracy or copyright infringement can be ordered to shut down, thus killing off innovation on the Internet. Not to mention that it promotes excessive censorship as just about every site on the Internet has hyperlinks or hard-to-police user-generated content and hence are susceptible to prosecution, which means that companies would under the laws be free to prosecute and censor any site that doesn’t agree with their views or serve their interests, as long as the site can be proven to even slightly facilitate copyright infringement.

It’s basically an attempt at censorship masked as an anti-piracy act. You’re right, we shouldn’t shut down entire search engines. But SOPA gives companies the power to prosecute and/or order the shutdown of just about every internet site, including search engines. So thank god it’s been shelved (for now).

yes that law could shut them down but it would not cause they will turn them selves off to avoid the millions of dollars possibly billions in the law suits for each infringement which you tube technically would have about 60,000,000 things they could get sued for. as would face book and goggle understand folks under the new law everything posted or suppled to the web that is not your own peice of work is illegal if you do not pay for the write from the creator.

and if you think you tube would stay up and running with billions of videos that have songs or clips from other things on them you are wrong face book to would shut down from all the links and other things posted by it’s members .