The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA, are causing quite a backlash on the internet.
If you visited the English version of Wikipedia on Wednesday, you were brought to a page asking you to "imagine a world without free knowledge." The website went black for a 24-hour period to protest both pieces of legislation.
Google and a host of other websites joined in on the protest, claiming the anti-piracy legislation is far too over-reaching. They believe it goes well beyond protecting the music and motion picture industries from foreign websites infringing on copyrights.
It could bring their business to a halt.
"Basically what this bill does is put too much of a burden on companies like Wikipedia to start really policing the vast majority of info that are on their sites," said Congressman Tim Ryan, D-Niles.
He said the legislation could make or break the smaller start-up companies, which are the ones the Valley is starting to rely on for an economic boost. That's exactly the case at AST2, a local company developing software to allow remote access to computers and networks.
"We would have to hire more people to monitor and police that, which would create a lot of overhead. But we wouldn't be making any money off these people. Their sole purpose would be to monitor," said Stephe Kamykowski with AST2.
Kamykowski believes the blackout by the major companies helped raise almost instant awareness on Wednesday about these bills, and he hopes it will change the minds of lawmakers in Congress.
