Five Links Summary

01. The Washington Times

In 2012, America government came up with two bills which intent to protect copyright on internet. One is called Sopa (Stop Online Piracy Act), the other is called Pipa (Protect IP Act).

Those bills act as more of a internet restriction and monitoring towards downloading from internet. The author argues with those two bills, the America is no different from countries like China and Syria. With the bills, it sacrifices the liberty of peoples rights of downloading and using the internet.

One of the major influence which these bills caused was the shut down of a famous and popular file sharing site called Megaupload.

The owner of Megaupload - Kim Dotcom, was arrested in New Zealand by FBI with accusations as holding the site for pirated content. However, Megaupload claimed to be a legal storage site for many users, even many famous people were the member of the site.

Because of the shutdown of Megaupload, it caused many to rethink about what major influences Sopa and Pipa might cause toward the internet society and rights right now.

02. New Zealand Herald

The New Zealand "anti-piracy" law, also known as the "three strikes law" came effect in 1st September 2011, and it was passed in April 2011.

The law work in the way of Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) sending out notices to internet providers in New Zealand about possible possibility of illegally downloading copyright content happening under the internet service provider. Afterwards, the internet service provider will send out warning to which they consider as having illegally downloading copyright content. If the user received three warnings, he can be fined up to $15,000.

03. The New York Times

In 2011, America Government came up with two anti-piracy bills, which are Sopa (Stop Online Piracy Act) and Pipa (Protect IP Act). The bills are supported by some of the biggest companies, such as music and movies publishers. However, some other big complies such as Twitter, Google, Youtube and Wikipedia opposed these bills.

The intention of Sopa and Pipa bills are achieving anti-piracy by stopping search engines, such as google and yahoo, as well as other websites to direct the internet users toward website contains pirated contents. Because of the bills, many protests were taken, which involves many websites. However, the bills still lead to the shut down of famous file sharing site - Megaupload.

04. The National Business Review

The article stated that Sony Pictures New Zealand general manager Andrew Cornwell stated he thinks the New Zealand's anti-piracy law offers more of an educative process, and with the harsh penalty to possibly stop people downloading pirated contents. The act is published to secure investments in intellectual property.

But on a side note, the wifi internet providers are not targeted as internet providers to carry out this act. However, normal internet service providers have to monitor their users internet usage to send out warning notices to those suspected for piracy.

New Zealand Internet Service Provider EOL on the other hand stated that they think the new copyright bill will be ineffective, because there are still many other methods for people to download pirated content without any detection.

05. CNN

Megaupload was shut down by America authorities, to many it is considered as an overreaction by the authorities. Before the shut down of Megaupload, it was the 72nd most viewed website according to traffic-tracking service Alexa.

Even though the America authorities insisted that Megaupload has obvious evidence on storing piracy contents. However, the founder of Megaupload - Kim Dotcom insisted the site was operated legally.

As the result of the action of shutting down Megaupload, many hackers around the globe responded with the action of taking down Justice Department, FBI websites, Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, New Zealand Police and many other sites. But the sites were back to normal on Friday.

The America Authorities action against Megaupload has raised attention to the controversial anti-piracy bills in the U.S, which are SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and Pipa (Protect Intellectual Property Act) bills.