Stop Online Piracy Act - infographic

The US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is controversial depending if your business model needs copyright protection (helpful) or user-generated content (censorship)

AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga delivered a letter to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives last month that argues SOPA “pose[s] a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation’s cybersecurity.” They later ran the letter as a full-page ad in The New York Times.

Meanwhile, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) support the bill.

“If rogue websites legislation passes, American jobs will be preserved and the Internet will continue to be free and open,” reads an MPAA blog post. “Content protection laws have given us the Internet of today, alive with innovation, free speech and commerce.”

As the opposing sides launch arguments about how the other will ruin the Internet, the rules that incited this debate can be hard to sort out. The infographic outlines the bill’s history, how it would work and why some Internet companies oppose it.