Posted 01/25/2012 - 1:33pm by Julia M
Some weeks ago we covered the efforts in Congress to create aggressive new anti-piracy legislation. Those efforts and others put illegal file sharing and copyright protection at the piracy bills in the U.S. House and Senate (respectively), failed to make it past the committee stage in the wake of large-scale protests against the legislation. High profile protests included self-imposed blackouts by Wikipedia and Reddit, among others.
Most observers say that these bills amounted to an overreach by the content providers. But the failure of these particular bills won’t be the last we’ve heard of it. After all, just a few weeks ago, SOPA and PIPA seemed to have broad-based support. The question now is about how future legislation might be crafted to gain more support. Most congressional observers believe that the next serious attempt won’t take place until next year, well after the election. In the meantime, here’s the LA Times take on what may happen next.
The second big item in the anti-piracy efforts, close on the heels of the collapse of SOPA and PIPA, was the news about one of the biggest file-sharing busts ever. The FBI, in cooperation with authorities in New Zealand and Hong Kong, shut down the Megaupload site. Megaupload provided easy cloud storage for millions of users, who could share material with friends. But the feds and copyright holders also claim it was a haven for illegal file sharing. Read all about the site and its capabilities from CNN. And see this follow-up from paidcontent.org about the legal case.
