SOPA, or "Stop Online Piracy Act", is a bill that will allow the U.S. government to seek court orders against sites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringing material. If you post something on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or anything else, the government would be able to take legal action against the site. The sites obviously don't want this, and what this bill will eventually lead to is censorship of the Internet. For those of you who don't know, most democracies, including the United States, are founded on the principle of freedom of speech, which is clearly outlined in the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights.

SOPA is being voted on by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee this Thursday, and is very likely to pass. Once passed, it will move out of the committee, and the entire House can pass it at any time. Remember, the government is supposed to represent the people, and we don't want this at all. Unfortunately, the government is run by corporations with politicians in their pocket, which is why this has a very good chance of passing, but we must do what we can to keep this thing down. If we can stop it here, we can end it forever.

Some of you may be saying to yourselves, "I don't live in the United States, so this doesn't affect me!" Well, it does. Many websites such as Facebook and YouTube are based in the United States, so they fall under the government's jurisdiction, and if this bill becomes law and one of these websites violates it, the resulting action will affect people around the world.

So I come to you, asking for your help. Please visit http://www.americancensorship.org and call or write an email to your local Congressman making your point. In addition, you can spread the word on social networking sites and on other forums.

I know this is unrelated to G7 specifically, but it's a global announcement because it CAN affect this site and is incredibly important in determining the future of online communications. We live in a republic and we need to make our voices heard, because it's the only way these politicians will listen.

I've known about this for weeks now in many updates from big youtubers. IF the U.S. Government passes this bill, then those youtube partners and people who make money off of solo business on the internet are likely to lose their jobs. This is fucking bullshit and us citizens need to make a stand, saying we will not put up censorship of the internet.

It sucks that global announcements are less noticeable than regular threads.

It won't pass. But if it does, then what exactly does it entail? Will IGN, Machinma, GameSpot etc be out of business? And how exactly will it hinder us?

I don't think Gamestop will run out of business.

The United States can't control what companies based in the U.S do in the rest of the world. Their jurisdiction does not go beyond the United States.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-amendment/

This I can live with, though I still don't want it to pass.

They have a commercial for it.

I just recently seen that same commercial on TV too. Must be on it a lot because I don't even watch TV anymore.