I have to admit...I had no idea what the hell SOPA and PIPA (Stop On-line Privacy Act & Pro-IP Act) were until this morning when I noticed a bunch of websites are shutting themselves down in protest. So I suppose that the intentions here are good ones as we are well aware that creators of all types of media frequently have their content viewed for free when it was not their intention. I may have even benefitted from this practice before. Hell...there are probably 50 youtube videos on this site alone that this applies to.
Of course the other side of this argument is that these people wouldn't be paying for this shit anyway and in many cases just the exposure will get you some good word of mouth and open up opportunities to make money where they previously wouldn't exist. Anyway, this has been an ongoing fight since the days of Napster and it certainly doesn't appear as if though online piracy is going anywhere. It's okay though, because apparently the government is going to fix it.
I'll do a far shittier job of explaining this than this video that I stole from Vimeo but on the surface; this a little scary...



