I'll put here what I told my friend.
Someone once told me "SOPA allows the US government to ban users from the internet".
Let's get a few things strait here.
SOPA is Stop Online Piracy Act. It allows the US government to take down any website without authorization of the server host, domain host, or the person buying the hosting services from either the domain host or the server host that is linked to piracy.
That power will stretch over all countries that have an agreement with the United States. One of the countries that don't have an agreement with us is Sweden, where the popular ThePirateBay site is hosted. Pirating sites in Sweden(there are a lot) wont be affected by this bill, and will remain standing because, as they said in one of their legal conversations, your law is not my law. US laws are not justified all over the world, unlike a lot of people think.
SOPA is Stop Online Piracy Act, not Stop Online Freedom Act. It's funny how rumors spread isn't it? What SOPA does seems to change with everybody. Here is a list of ideas that people have of what SOPA does:
- SOPA allows the US government to take down(DNS change, etc.) any website within jurisdiction of US law that is linked to piracy (true)
- SOPA allows the US government to take down any website they want anywhere with any reason (false
- SOPA takes away our internet freedoms (true but false, it only takes away the freedom of the illegal act(in the US) of piracy within jurisdiction of US law)
- SOPA bans users from the internet (false)
- SOPA makes the internet the US government's bitch by giving them full control over it (false)
SOPA is made for good intentions, but the US government, you can never be too sure about them.
In a nutshell, people can be dumb and not see the true meaning of SOPA.
By the way, I support SOPA as it wont take down any sites that I care about(there all in Sweden, because the creators are smart).
Just remember, if the US government takes too much control over the internet, we can always create another protocol.