Congressman Jim McGovern, D-Worcester, commented on his Facebook page, "While internet piracy is an issue that should be addressed, HR 3261 (SOPA), as written is unwise, unfair, and against what I believe are fundamental rights for all Americans. I plan on voting against the current legislation, although the GOP is now indicating that they will not bring SOPA to the floor for a vote at all."

Darrell Issa, congressman, echoed that the SOPA bill would not make it to the House floor for a vote, but that PIPA (Protect IP Act), remains concerning to Issa, as reported on zdnet.com.

SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, sponsored by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, "would establish a system for taking down websites that the Justice Department determines to be dedicated to copyright infringment. The DoJ or the copyright owner would be able to commence a legal action against any site they deem to have "only limited purpose or use other than infringement, and the DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site. It would also make unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty up to five years in prison. This bill combines two separate Senate bills -- S.968 and S.978 -- into one big House bill."

Gizmodo.com offers a more understandable explanation of how the act would work.

There are numerous petitions and informational pages circulating about SOPA, and Wikipedia and other major sites are currently "blacked out" in protest.

"If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States," the Wikimedia foundation said.

Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Senator Scott Brown joined more than a dozen other legislators in announcing that he will vote 'no' on both the Stop Online Piracy and the Protect Intellectual Property bills.

"I’m going to vote NO on #PIPA and #SOPA. The Internet is too important to our economy," he tweeted.

What are your thoughts on SOPA and PIPA? Good or bad? Give us your viewpoint in the comments.

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