1. SOPA attempts to prevent piracy of content.  The problem is that it requires very little proof that the content has been pirated before it expects the host website to remove the offending material.  Just a formal complaint could be enough. Effectively a large company could shut down an overseas content aggregator site just by raising sufficient number of frivolous complaints against it.

2. SOPA primarily aims to target non-US sites by cutting off their revenue streams by making their sites inaccessible to US visitors, removing their listing from Google search results, and stopping payments through services like PayPal

3. The Indian Internet Censorship efforts are intended to target messages deemed to “offend” religious sentiments or which are considered depraved.  It also can be used against online material that would be deemed defamatory if it appeared in traditional media.

4. The Indian rules would make it the onus of the website host to prevent or remove such messages from appearing on its site.  Effectively, unmoderated posts would become impossible, and self-censorship would throttle freedom of expression.  While noone would knowingly want to host “offensive” material on their site - and most have regulation in place to prevent the obviously offensive - what offends one person could be another person’s art, as the persecution of M F Husain and Salman Rushdie have proven.  For business content websites, the difficulty would be in deciding what was legitimate criticism of business strategy versus defamation.

5. How do these initiatives impact you? Most popular sites (including this one) tend to rely on user-generated content, usually unmoderated.  This would be risky in the new scenario both in the US and India.  Secondly, many people use sites like Twitter and Facebook to vent against companies, bosses, society, and poor service.  They may now be targeted legally by these firms for sullying their reputation.  Neither of these initiatives has become a reality yet.  It’s your time to take a stance and voice your opinion, yay or nay.

More on SOPA at http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa

A recent interview on the Indian Censorship attempt with lawyer Sajan Poovayya

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/five-questions-india-and-online-censorship/221322-11.html