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Recently in the United States a bill of rights was introduced under the name SOPA. This stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. This act was set into place with the goal of ridding the internet of all copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. This includes things like online music, online shows and all other types of files and programs that are under some sort of copyright. SOPA would essentially shut down websites such as YouTube, Flicker and Vimeo which have videos of content that could be viewed by some as copyrighted. What this would mean for music is that no videos of artists music could be uploaded to any site which is hosted in the United States. This would in theory shut down the whole concept of music piracy in the United States of America, which I completely support. However because of the overall boundaries of SOPA it would also endanger the whole music business. Justin Bieber and a number of other well off internet sensations started off by doing musical covers of music on YouTube. This ended up being one of the most viewed YouTube videos, yet if SOPA were to come into place, all covers of any songs, or even videos which used copyrighted songs in the background would be completely banned. This could in fact greatly damage the music industry as a large portion of new stars arise from popular online covers. Not only this but if SOPA were to come into affect there would be a lot less access to songs and also a lot fewer advertisements. However the music industry still says that it supports the claims of the bill as it does in fact have a moral implication to it which is justifiable. However some artists and producers still say that this could be the death of the internet and that the negative affects would outweigh the positive affects of this bill on the music industry.


In my opinion SOPA is a great concept, to eliminate practically all file sharing and downloading and music piracy. Yet at the same time it would be doing as much, if not more damage then good. Not only to the music business but to the internet as a whole as SOPA from many perspectives is a violation of peoples online rights. The downloading of illegal music may in fact take away a large portion of business from the music industry, but the amount of people who go to concerts and events after hearing one song, would drop even more. For all the bad it does music piracy is one of the fastest and most effective way for artists to become well known and thus make more money, so to take that away would be silly and unhelpful. The United States of America has a large amount of sway among the international community, meaning that if SOPA is in fact passed in the states this kind of blocking could be expected everywhere.