http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Quotes: SOPA (the "Stop Online Piracy Act") and PIPA (the "Protect Intellectual Property Act" ) are bills in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, respectively. These bills are presented as efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites,
SOPA and PIPA would put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won't have sufficient resources to defend themselves.
For example, in its current form, SOPA could require Wikipedia to actively monitor every site we link to, to ensure it doesn't host infringing content. Any link to an infringing site could put us in jeopardy of being forced offline.
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Somebody put the situation quite nicely on a mountain bike forum:
They can already do this (force you to remove links or material) through DMCA, and it's not hard. DMCA process says someone has to send a notice saying "this link item is infringing, take it down, or we will take you down." SOPA/PIPA changes this to "we took down your whole site becuase you had an item that was infringing. thxbye."
This seems like a serious threat against websites where USERS (us) share information and other material of interest.