SOPA bill gets shelved

The Stop Online Piracy Act has had the Internet in a rage for the past few months. Several companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook all highly opposed the bill which fundamentally gave the government power to shut down sites that were in breach of copyright – the bigger issue was that the bill also gave power for them to take down websites even if they linked to a website that had copyrighted material on it.

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Whilst the Internet was a rage, the White House failed to give a proper position on SOPA, until now. Yesterday the Obama administration responded to a petition that was posted on the ‘We The People’ section of the White House website. “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” The statement read. “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small”