The Internet's Perilous New Year's Resolution - Technology Review

Concluding paragraphs of another SOPA snapshot

SOPA has the support of more than 140 companies and organizations, mainly in the music, book, television, and film industries. Many major Internet companies oppose it.

There's little evidence that similar legislation elsewhere has worked. In 2009, for instance, France passed "three strikes" legislation that was meant to require Internet service providers to cut off access to people who had ignored two warnings to stop trading pirated works. The government set up a bureaucracy to implement the measure earlier this year. But actual enforcement has been slow in coming; ISPs say the task of tracking pirated works is very costly, and they want the government to pay for it.

In the case of the U.S. legislation, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that hiring enforcement staff in the U.S. Department of Justice would cost $47 million over the next five year.

The Internet's Perilous New Year's Resolution - Technology Review