SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. Currently US Congress and Senate are considering this act together with the The Protect IP Act with hearings and all for enactment.
I’m an independent Hotelier based in Europe. So I only have a slight understanding of all of their implications and ramifications, but I understand Internet giants like Google and Facebook are (among others) heavily lobbying against these two bills. Why would that be? When enacted copyright holders can via very simple measures (a writ to a hosting company) have bad websites cut off from the Internet. Furthermore financial institutions like banks and credit card companies could by the same sort of simple measure to be forced to cut off the bad guys from their income.
Now Google is noteworthy for scraping copyrighted material like photos from everybody’s website and regurgitating same for the “better of search results”. FaceBook does it in a slightly different way: It lets its members publish copyrighted material.
Can I now simply force Google to delete any photo material of my hotel I have the copyright to? Can I force their ISP to cut them off? Can I force their banks to cut their financial resources?
Take this one step further: Online Travel Agents do sometimes scrape copyrighted material. Tripadvisor may do it. Groupon like sites may do it.
Can I as an independent Hotelier force all these power houses from the Internet?
I know, I’m just dreaming of a more organic Internet that is not dominated by search giants or OTA’s, but sometimes it is nice to dream off.
My 2 cents. And your’s?
From our point of view, the real worry is how internet search results can be manipulated. Could it mean that someone could complain about us using their (legally bought) photographs, and we would have to deal with proving otherwise?
We all know that big companies will act first and negotiate second, and small operators simply don’t have a chance against the big boys.
Frightening.