What is PIPA?
PIPA is the acronym of the English term “Protect Intellectual Property Act“, which can be translated as “Law to Protect Intellectual Property”. It consists of a bill proposed by the United States government, whose purpose is to protect companies that own intellectual property rights on certain content, such as: movie studios, TV stations, music record companies, book publishers, etc.
Like the other well-known SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill, PIPA aims to combat piracy on the internet.
The PIPA law aims to punish sites, social networks or portals that allow the dissemination of contents with protected intellectual property. With the approval of this bill, the sites will be obliged to prevent the distribution and dissemination of this type of content. If they do not comply with the law, those who manage them may be terminated, or even subjected to a prison sentence.
Big companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter or Wikipedia have spoken against the approval of the PIPA and SOPA bills, because they think they limit freedom of expression on the internet. On the other hand, these projects have the support of major industries like Disney, Paramount, Universal or Warner Bros.
This bill would be voted on in the US Senate on January 24, 2012. However, following the various demonstrations, the votes were postponed without definition of a new date.