If you work in or with small businesses or startups, chances are you’ve heard something about SOPA, The Stop Online Piracy Act. And you may have heard of her Senate bill sister, PIPA, The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011). If you haven’t heard of them and you’re savvy enough to find this blog, you will know today that this is a big deal; just try to look something up on to Wikipedia.

Whenever political matters arise, I usually wait for PBS’ Frontline to address the issue. Frontline episodes are bipartisan, very well researched, and explain the background and implications to both sides of an issue. And I feel most comfortable deciding my opinion on a matter after watching one of these shows.

Unfortunately, Frontline has not had time to produce a show explaining SOPA. But my feeling that this is an important issue for entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses has brought me to research and address this issue. My hope is to give you information you need to know about the issue and to help you understand what it means for small business and startups.

What is SOPA?

I found out about SOPA right after our holiday break at Scrappy Face. This is the article that caught my eye: GoDaddy loses over 37,000 domains due to SOPA stance.

In short, GoDaddy showed up on a list of companies that support SOPA. Many boycotted – persuading GoDaddy customers to move their domains on December 29, 2011.

My initial reaction was, “Now this is something to tweet about!” But first I checked Wikipedia for an understanding of SOPA, here’s how they define SOPA:

• SOPA was introduced to the House on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith from Texas.

• The bill would allow enforcement of copyright to prevent “trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.”

• Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites.

• Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions.

• “The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against website accused of facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 such infringements within six months.”

Here’s more information about Wikipedia’s blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA.

Who is SOPA supporting?

That was my first question, and this Washington Post article does a good job explaining it. In short, it says that SOPA was created because “a bipartisan group of lawmakers said new laws are needed to help media outlets, software makers and retailers fight the illegal distribution of movies, songs and software.”

But states that everyone is crazy about SOPA: “Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other Web giants launched a media blitz…urging lawmakers to vote against the proposal. Vague language in the bill would force them to shut down the domain names of infringing sites and would lead to lawsuits, they said. Telecommunications firms, including Verizon Communications, complained that the bill would force them to stop Internet traffic that contained illegal content.”

For years, the movie, music, and software industries have lost profits due to illegal distribution. Huge profits are also made selling stolen goods online. This bill was made to resolve this issue. Here is a list of SOPA supporters from the Judiciary Committee.

Who is against SOPA?

“Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Mozilla, LinkedIn, Twitter, eBay, AOL, and Zynga have jointly written to the House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary to express their concern at the proposed SOPA bill,” according to this article on The Sociable.

And tech startups have joined them. On December 22, Ben Huh, one of Seattle’s favorite entrepreneurs and CEO of The Cheezburger Network threatened to move 1,000 domains from GoDaddy. As he mentioned in his tweet, “We love you guys, but #SOPA-is-cancer to the Free Web.”

Some Seattle folks created this video that explains the tech companies point of view:

What is happening now?

This article reported on January 16, that “SOPA will not move forward in the House as the official vote has been cancelled and the bill has been yanked from the floor.” However, there is a blackout scheduled for today, January 18, which will continue as a way of protesting the legislation. Here is a list of those participating in the SOPA strike:

• Wikipedia
• WordPress
• Reddit
• Mozilla
• The Cheezburger Network Sites
• BoingBoing
• The Raw Story
• Internet Archive
• MoveOn.org
• Imgur
• TwitPic
• The Oatmeal

When you visit these websites today, you will see a message about SOPA from that company and a message asking you to call or write to your local congressmen, asking them to oppose SOPA.

You can view the full list of sites and startups that have signed up to participate in the strike, here. And here’s a preview of one Stop SOPA blackout page.

Google, while not blacking out their entire site, is participating in the SOPA strike. Go to Google’s homepage to find out exactly what they’re doing.

What Does SOPA Mean for Small Business and Startups?

As entrepreneurs, we understand what it’s like to create things from scratch. We build teams, hire people and firms, and risk our money and other people’s money. Can you imagine how upset you would be if people were getting your product for free? It would affect the quality of the products you make in the future. It would affect the people who were involved in the project. It would affect your industry.

And so, aside from understanding how it will affect small businesses and startups, it is important to understand why this bill was proposed and to empathize with the music and movie industries because they want protection from pirated copies of music and movies.

But there seems to be something else threatening about this bill for people and companies, small businesses and startups alike, to be upset enough that they would black out their website for one day. And I think this blog post by Jeffrey Taylor explains what it means to small business best:

“Google’s policy counsel testified at the House hearing on Wednesday and specifically addressed how SOPA may affect small business. She posed a scenario involving a small business operating an online storefront that allows other small businesses to sell products.

Imagine that a single supplier begins selling counterfeit handbags. Even if the site removed the merchandise, it could arguably be labeled as ‘dedicated to theft.’ The trademark owner could then force ad networks and payment processers to stop servicing the site.

No notification of the online storefront owner is required.”

To me, the last sentence says a lot.

Entrepreneurs Stand Up

Tech savvy people build things when they are passionate, and there are many passionate people getting involved in this issue. Here are ways to strike against SOPA:

• Write to your members of Congress and urge them to vote against SOPA by filling out this form.
• Change your Twitter profile picture to stop SOPA by clicking here.
• Get the SOPA WordPress Plug-In for your site.
• Use hashtags #sopastrike or #stopsopa on Twitter.
• If you’re in Seattle, there’s a meetup on January 18 from 11:30a to 1:30p in Westlake Center, Amazon Square (South Lake Union) and in Bellevue. Click here for details.

And if you are in support of SOPA, speak out too. This is why America is so great.

What do you think about SOPA?

The Obama Administration came out over the weekend, publically opposing SOPA, but that does not mean that the issue is dead.

Please share it in the comments below. I would love to hear from you. I am not an expert on this topic, so if you are, please contribute to the conversation.