Copyright bills in the 2011-2012 United States Congress

There were different but similar copyright bills in the 112th United States Congress: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. A typical route for legislation like this is to pass some version in both houses (so called companion bills), then refer the two bills to a conference committee, which would produce a single bill likely to pass both houses.

These bills were motivated by concerns of copyright holders that their copyright protection in being undermined by the illegal dissemination of copyrighted information via the Internet. Opponents of the proposed legislation say that the proposed remedies are far worse than the problem they are intended to solve.

Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites like YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar". The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned that Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law. According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter. Many cloud computing and Web hosting services may leave the US to avoid lawsuits.

The Motion Picture Association of America claimed the act's effect on business would be slight, noting that at least 16 countries block websites, and the internet still functions in those countries. Denmark, Finland and Italy blocked The Pirate Bay after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and a coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit.

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