They are designed to control those websites which sell illegally copied substances including movies, music etc.

Federal Law in the USA allows the authorities to terminate the operation of the local websites which exhibit pirated contents. But the law cannot do anything against the overseas sites like ‘Pirate Bay’.

The Motion Pictures Association of America has found out that the media companies in the USA have lost Billions of dollars on account of this, because at least 13% of the youth of the country watch these illicit movies or TV shows online.

The methods to stop the piracy
Fundamentally the foreign sites should not be provided with any sort of finance by way of advertisements or anything like that. No assistance whatsoever should be granted to them. They should not have access to links.

Justice Department prosecutors will have to be empowered to thwart illegal sites from getting US funding and US customers.

The new powers
With the concurrence of the court, the Justice Department will have to force the US Internet Service Providers to refrain from connecting to private websites overseas. The users should not be able to type the web address of the sites. Otherwise the search engines like Google should be directed to render links to those sites inoperative.

Payment to such sites through credit card should be withheld by stoppage of payment processing.

Advertising networks should not be allowed to place any advertisement on such sites. The display of advertisements from such sites in any public place should be curbed.

Even local content owners and Hollywood studios must be authorized to take action against the websites that exhibit pirated contents.

Freedom of speech censored
Those against the legislation protest that the law allows the content owners to take to task those US websites which unknowingly display spurious contents. That is the worry of Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter etc, because their sites are crowded with contents uploaded by users all over the world.

The opponents of the legislation are of the opinion that the best thing for the media companies would be to request the authorities to block the payment to such sites. That itself will curtail its right of free speech. It will also amount to shutting it down.

Another disclosure of the opponent of the bill is that dictatorial countries which are already dead against the internet usage by their subjects will be pleased with such a step from the side of the US authorities.

Disturbance to cyber security efforts
Google, eBay and other Internet companies are concerned that there is a provision in the legislation in blocking of Domain Name System (DNS), which is an integral part of the net. That is because DNS allows the correct flow of traffic. In other words when a user types a web address, it is converted into a series of numbers which forms the Internet Protocol address of the site. By blocking the conversion system, the traffic can be redirected or diverted away from the pirate websites.
But cyber security experts are of the opinion that the hackers can cheat the internet users and commit cyber crime making use of such redirection.

White House is against the DNS blocking as it foils cyber security efforts. This has prompted Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to make effort to get rid of the provision of DNS Blocking from the legislation. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee informed that DNS Blocking will not be included in the legislation for the time being. Cyber security problems will be thoroughly studied before considering DNS blocking.

Differenced between PIPA and SOPA
Both are almost similar. SOPA is in the House and PIPA in the Senate. The only difference is that as per SOPA, the House Bill, streaming of unauthorized copyrighted stuffs is against the law.

What happens when the bills become law?
The House Judiciary Committee is looking into the legislation. The committee could not complete the review in December due to non cooperation from a sizable number of members, including Rep.Darrel Issa, who did their best to prevent the bill from reaching the Congress. It is left to Rep. Smith, the main sponsor to plan for reschedule of the hearing for this month.

However the PIPA legislation was passed in May by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet there has not been floor action. The bill is co-sponsored by 47 Senators. However
Sen. Ron Wyden is against the bill. Last month, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader was advised by six Republican senators to go slow in taking floor action until all anomalies are set right.

Only if both the houses pass the bill, the president can sign or veto the bill. The White House expressed its concern again but stated that it is against piracy, which should be dispensed away with.

Trefor Davies, the chief executive of Timico revealed in one of his blog postings that the telecommunications watchdog of the United Kingdom, Ofcom has confirmed the fresh legislation would just impact over seven UK broadband providers and would seldom include mobile broadband.

Nevertheless, there were plans to make sure that the code would be engaged in regard to every broadband internet company whose users shared online files illegally.

Davies further disclosed that illegal online downloaders that migrated to a broadband provider that were hardly included in the code’s soft launch would be eventually covered as the regulator followed the traffic.

Davies added that the regulator was also analysing closely the levels of copyright infringement besides what was preventing the realisation of new innovative business models.

It has been reported that the French presidential marriage was on the rocks much like the credibility of the three strikes anti-online filesharers law of France, handpicked and pampered to the podium by the celebrity couple.

As a matter of fact, it is a point to ponder whether Nickolas Sarkozy had really a soft corner for this legislation, although his wife that had been a product of the copyright industry and was still living it, had been keen on it – if you can call that lobbying.

These days both presidantial marriage and the French three strikes anti-online piracy law have taken serious hits with a torrent of reports linking the president with Chantal Jouanno the French Ecology minister, and his wife with Benjamin Biolay an award winning musician, literally tarnishing the respectability of the marriage while the other thing, the much touted of law has been virtually reduced to a show-piece with downloaders adopting alternatives to bypass it.

It is fact that there is a law in France to prevent illegal downloaders from doing it persistently; nonetheless the big question is now that the first lady has showed her real colours to blow life to a fresh romance, which too with a mop-haired trademark cutie of the creative industry bound by copyright, would the president carry on with the same alacrity he had shown earlier when his love life with Bruni was at its whirlwind best.

It is also believed that with reports coming in saying online illegal downloading has only increased despite the adoption of the three strikes law in the country, at least some of the broadband providers here would start protesting. And whatmore needed for a perfect ignition when a fresh research has revealed that disconnecting the downloaders actually was hurting the revenues of the creative industry.

On the whole, it is tough times ahead for both the prestigeous presidential marriage and the controversial anti-online piracy law of the French. However, Bruni can afford a broad smile; she has not only at least for once tasted the altitudes that she had always dreamt of wildly but also has pushed it through shrewdly for her godfathers – and for herself – in the music industry.

The expert has made it clearer by saying that the government was required to elaborate on its cut off plans of the broadband connections enjoyed by the persistent illegal downloaders of copyright content.

The expert that has expressed her views is Deborah Prince, legal affairs head at consumer magazine Which?. According to her, although the digital economy bill was reasonable as a whole, the ministers needed to technically explain how they were going to identify those who were guilty of illegal filesharing.

Prince explained while talking to the Daily Telegraph that a general acceptance existed on the view that illegal activity on an internet connection may not be connected to the account holder as there also existed the threat of potential hacking of the service.

Prince added that it was critical that these anti-filesharing measures would be used mostly to educate the users rather than for beating them up.

According to reports, the pop mogul has launched his seemingly maiden piece of political lobbying in the United Kingdom, as he urged the MPs to pass the anti-piracy measures proposed by the Digital Economy Bill as a matter of urgency.

As a matter of fact, The Telegraph has reported as seeing a strongly worded letter signed by Cowell, alongside a number of other prominent figures from the literary and film world, which would be recieved by the MPs and Lords on February 22.

The letter, according to the popular newspaper urges the MPs and Lords to urge the government to get the Digital Economy Bill’s anti-piracy measures pushed through. Something that could see the broadband internet connections of persistent online filesharers being cut off.

Reports say that the letter that also includes the signature of Sir Terry Pratchett who represents the author’s interests, states that the bill would ensure that the creators, entertainment firms and the 1.8 million people that depend on the cultural sector for a livelihood were rewarded as well as respected in the future as they had been in the past, for they get a decent payment when their work is put online.