Geek Girl's guide to business in Florida

It took a day of protesting SOPA and PIPA Bills with organizations like Wikipedia, Google and Reddit to really get the attention of lawmakers. I know I was reposting like crazy and reading up on both bills to refresh my memory on the issues. It took this outcry on the web and social media to get me back to my long neglected blog! These bills effect business both in Florida but also in our country.

I was so excited to read Marco Rubio's Facebook update this afternoon that he was backing down on his support of PIPA. What bold about face. I applaud his change of heart and the courage to change it based on the need for further research and discovery for better solutions to protect IP.

Here is a small nugget from his announcement and link to the full document.
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/01/rubio-says-he-doesnt-support-internet-piracy-bill-aka-the-wikipedia-blackout-bill-anymore.html

{From today's announcement: "I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor. Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet." Please SHARE this article to support the need for balancing American jobs and Internet freedom.
Rubio says he doesn't support Internet piracy bill (aka the Wikipedia blackout bill) anymore. }

Thank you, Mr. Rubio. Another reason why I voted for you! Let's hope with more courageous and commonsense decisions, we can find more reasonable ways to control rogue criminals and deter piracy and theft without granting wide sweeping power to a few.

Here is a link to information that shows the differences between the SOPA and PIPA bills from IB Times.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/283906/20120118/sopa-pipa-bills-differences-internet-privacy-senate.htm


1. Who will be voting on them: SOPA arose out of the U.S. House of Representatives, while the U.S. Senate is behind PIPA. The Republican-led House has different prevailing views on web privacy than does the Democratic Senate. SOPA is slated to return to markup by the House Judiciary Committee next month, while the Senate is slated to hold a procedural vote to begin debate on PIPA Jan. 24.


2. How extreme they are: SOPA is the more extreme bill, as its controversial provisions would extend to any site "committing or facilitating" copyright infringement, while PIPA would only extend to sites with "no significant use other than" copyright infringement, as PC World has reported. Though this may sound like an issue of semantics, the difference is vast, as SOPA could impact any site that has even one instance of copyright infringement. That concept has brought the ire of everyone from Google to Wikipedia to the American Civil Liberties Union, all of which are concerned that the bill could lead to the wholesale shutdown of major sites and online communities like Facebook, Yahoo or Twitter simply because one of their users posted copyrighted material. PIPA is more narrow in that it would only impact sites that do little more than facilitate piracy, like the perennial scapegoat, Europe's ThePirateBay.


3. How much support they have in Congress: As of Jan. 17, SOPA has a total of 31 House cosponsors attached to it, out of 435 Representatives. That means only about 7.1 percent of House members support the Stop Online Privacy Act. Meanwhile, PIPA had a total of 40 Senate cosponsors on Jan. 17, out of 100 Senators. That amounts to 40 percent of the Senate supporting the Protect IP Act. In other words, PIPA has much more support in its respective house of Congress than SOPA does.

4. How popular they are: Well-informed web privacy wonks and major web giants are pretty much unequivocally against both SOPA and PIPA. But the backlash against SOPA has been the strongest. Web sites from Wikipedia to Boing Boing went dark Wednesday to protest laws that would restrict Internet freedom. But SOPA has received the most grief, as the event became known as the "SOPA Blackout," and most information about the protest contained more prominent critiques of the House legislation rather than the Senate bill.