The document discusses the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill that would have allowed the US to shut down websites hosting copyrighted material. There was massive opposition from websites like Wikipedia, Google, and Mozilla who conducted blackouts to protest SOPA. Due to the protests, the bill was postponed, preventing it from being passed and allowing the free internet to continue existing.

1. How Close We Were To Losing The
Internet

2.  SOPA is a legislative bill proposed by Lamar S.
Smith, an U.S. Representative. SOPA stands
for the “Stop Online Piracy Act”, a bill that
once passed, will allow the U.S. to shut down
and arrest any website or individual that is
using copyrighted material.
 It gives the U.S. law force authorization to
fight illegal spreading of intellectual
property and counterfeit goods.
 In essence, it was a bill that wants to stop all
online piracy, domestic AND international.

3.  There were both supporters and opponents of
SOPA, of which the opponents were the majority.
 The supporters argued that the U.S. government
had the right to protect its citizens’ intellectual
property on the internet, and could therefore
convict any pirate or associated website with
fraud and copyright theft.
 The opponents argued that the internet was a
free domain, and is composed mainly of user-
generated content. If America takes down any
violator of copyright, the internet would cease
to exist.

4.  All over the globe, dozens and dozens of
websites protested against SOPA, mainly the
ones which rely on user-generated content.
Wikipedia, Google, and Mozilla all put up
banners on their websites, advocating users
to try and stop the passing of SOPA.
 Due to the lack of response from
senators, many websites completely blacked
out on January 18th, 2012. An estimated 200
million people were affected by the
blackout.

5.  On January 20th, only 2 days after the
worldwide blackout, the House Judiciary
Committee decided to postpone the drafting
of the bill, effectively killing it.
 Mass online celebrations
occurred, celebrating the “death” of SOPA.
 The internet would remain free of America’s
online law enforcement for now.

6.  America would be basically be given full
control of patrolling the internet, arresting
any people who are accused of copyright
infringement or intellectual theft. They
could also shut down any website the culprit
posted their information on, such as
Wikipedia. Thus, any website could be
brought down, thanks to a few law-breakers.
 This means that
Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, Yahoo, and
hundreds of other websites could be taken
down by the U.S. government, regardless of
whether the websites are American or not.

7.  Search engines are at the greatest risk of
being taken down, if SOPA was passed. The
reason? Search engines act as gateways for
any user to access the internet. If you need
to search anything, you just need to go to
Google or Yahoo, search what you need, and
millions of websites would appear. If all
search engines were taken down, there
would be no way to process all this
information. This would cause an information
shortage, due to people not being able to
find information that they really need.

8.  Wikipedia is regarded as one of the most
useful and important websites in the
world, alongside Google and Youtube.
 Without it, we’ve basically lost the best and
most informative encyclopedia in the world.
During the 01/18/12 blackout, millions were
affected by the Wikipedia blackout. If SOPA
had been passed, there would basically be a
blackout 24/7.

9.  YouTube is the largest video-sharing website
in the world. Millions of people use it on a
daily basis, whether to look at funny cat
videos, the latest “Ray William Johnson”
clips, movie trailers, or music videos.
 If YouTube and other similar websites were
gone, we’d lose access to all those videos
and information. All those millions of videos,
gone.

10.  We should really be grateful that SOPA was
not passed. Were it passed, the internet
would die. It’s as simple as that. There would
be no more user-generated content at all, if
all the information-sharing websites were
taken down.
 However, the issue of copyright infringement
is still present. Is it legal and lawful to put
up the latest “Starcraft II” game on the
internet, so anyone can download it for free?
 There is no “correct” answer, but the answer
definitely isn’t “Let’s shut down everything!”

11.  Now get back to browsing the other PPTs on
this website, which lives and dies on user-
generated content.