User blog comment:Craiglpalmer/SOPA and PIPA Situation Summary/@comment-3210791-20120117225728/@comment-973828-20120118021246

In regards to Agent Slash's thing about being unsure what PIPA stands for, it's PROTECT Intellectual Property Act.

From what I've understood, SOPA is a derivative of PIPA (the latter being much worse). It aims to fight copyright infringement by censoring and blacklisting sites that contain content infringing copyright laws to U.S. citizens. PIPA actually has a provision that would enable a U.S. court to issue a court order against a non-American based website. From the way the laws are written, it is possible for an entire website to be taken down for one miniscule infringement of copyright (including on sites with user-generated content like YouTube), or force search engines to blacklist those sites to prevent people from finding them (a la the Great Firewall of China).