Name: Danica De Gracia BTM 1 March 21, 2012

Teacher: Mr. Rey Uzhmar Padit Economic 1 MW 9:00- 10:30

*What is the basis of US government in promoting SOPA and PIPA? Is it worth the loss in maximizing their economic revenues through implementing this bill?

Information nowadays is critically important especially when it comes to economic stability because it is one of the factors that affects the change of needs and wants of an individual, with the vast changing of our technology today which gives us easier access of information through internet including the public site like Google, YouTube, Twitter, and the most trending, the Face book where plagiarism are most likely to happen pushes the US government to take a serious step in making a decision to push through the implementation of first, the PIPA, an acronym for the Protect IP Act, and was first introduced to the U.S. Senate on May 12, 2011 by Senators Patrick Leahy which, if passed, will give U.S. corporations and the government the right to seek affirmative legal action with any website that they see as enabling copyright infringement whether of U.S. origin or not. This was followed by SOPA an acronym for Stop Online Piracy Act, and is a bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Lamar Smith on October 26, 2011 which if passed will work in conjunction with PIPA.

The reason behind these sudden action of the US government were the copying of information easily and illegally which affects the revenues of the big corporations especially in line with the entertainment industry that is said to have suffered greatly from online content theft especially in public site like YouTube. One of the advantage of this bill is that we can guarantee the quality of the product and also the information because every detail in the internet will be highly checked by copyright yet in my opinion the government should also give consideration that through online piracy, their movies and other productions were advertised extensively all over the world in a split second and if pointed out the profits or surplus at stake from piracy relative to the lost value all of the other Internet activities that would be stifled under SOPA/PIPA, the cost of piracy is just not that large. Sure, it’s concentrated in the hands of politically-powerful entertainment content companies, but relative to the rest of the vibrant, dynamic value creation that would "be disappeared" it's small. Moreover, domestic and international legal institutions already exist to deal with piracy; like any other human institution they are imperfect, but as a consequence of them the losses from piracy are small relative to what would be lost if Congress imposed SOPA.

The reason why I am so curious and very blatant in voicing out my opinion when in fact it is not a Philippine bill that were proposed is because these act are stopping us to innovate and that could change how we use the internet also the cost of utility that would be forgone is very high compared to its benefits in the market.