Early adopters of the proposed pieces of legislation have declared their need to further review ways Congress can alleviate the illegal downloading of intellectual property from foreign websites. Although the bills are shelved for the rest of the month, tech-savvy web users are still weary of the intent and scope of the bills.

“If the government censors the web, I think not only will the American people believe they are having their freedom of speech taken away, but also that it will have a very negative impact on Internet investors,” said Nigel Johnson, 22, a business information systems major. “If the web is censored, that could be the start of many more portions of the web being censored. Investors will put less money into it, and many jobs could be lost.”

Johnson’s concerns over a censored web stem from language within the original SOPA draft. When a user types a web address into a browser bar, the alpha-numeric domain name is converted into the series of numbers which constitute its IP address. This domain-name system (DNS) of directing Internet traffic was targeted by SOPA in its initial form, allowing for the redirection of traffic away from sites abusing intellectual property laws. Since the bill was brought before the House, the controversial provision has been removed.

Beyond the new powers granted to the government, the bills are pitting two of the world’s biggest industries against each other. SOPA’s major proponents, the Motion Picture Association of America along with major music studios, are tangled in a battle against technology icons like Google. The dividing line between the two interests puts Hollywood on the side of intellectual property and Silicon Valley fighting for freedom of speech.

Although downloading music or movies is no new phenomenon to students, the ways to obtain copyrighted material has increased dramatically over the last decade. Since 1999 and the advent of Napster, a file-sharing service infamous for its battles against the Recording Industry Association of America, new methods of transmitting media across the Internet have been adopted, including torrents, peer-to-peer networks and streaming.

This heated engagement led to an act of solidarity and defiance against SOPA and PIPA when websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit.com revoked their services. Reddit, a social website which allows users to vote content up or down on its bulletin boards, has been seeding information about the bills for weeks. Adrian Andrade, president of the Cal State Fullerton Reddit group, maintains the page and has very passionate views on the efficacy and intention of SOPA.

“There are no other methods of protecting intellectual property,” said Andrade, a business economics and finance major. “It will (be) inevitable that the movie/TV/music industry will generate less profit in the future, which is why they are trying to enact SOPA in the first place. The government should just (let) those industries die out so more organic forms of entertainment will emerge that are not entirely profit motivated, which will produce more quality and innovative forms of entertainment.”

Andrade referred to censorship as a tool used by the weak and sees the possibility of a corrupt government abusing powers given by SOPA. He and others against the legislation see the bill’s ambiguity toward offending websites as a means of circumventing due process.

“Shutting down a website without due process is especially terrifying since the company hosting the website will not have a chance to defend themselves, which is unethical,” Andrade said.

For example, if the office of the attorney general accuses a foreign website of distributing or helping to distribute copyrighted material, a court order could be served to search engines, online advertising agencies and Internet service providers operating domestically. The order demands that these sites redirect or block traffic from the foreign entity, remove ads or ads linking to the offender and requires payment networks to cease transactions to the foreign site. SOPA would allow the government to seize the site if it is domestic.

MegaUpload.com, a file-sharing website, was shut down Thursday by the Justice Department and FBI. Indictments against the site, including conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, allowed the agencies to arrest four executives connected with the site and seize nearly $50 million in assets without a hearing before a judge.

“The Internet is a resource for so many people across the world,” said Aissa Canchola, 22, a political science and American studies double major. “It has become not only a resource for information, but a communication tool and even a mode for globalization.”

Canchola said she believes the bill could set a precedent for the government’s ability to control the accessibility of information on the Internet.

Currently both bills have been postponed for consideration by lawmakers on either side of the aisle. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), author of SOPA, has said in a statement, “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

In the Senate, a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) from Republican co-sponsors of PIPA has delayed consideration of the bill. The White House does not support a bill with a DNS-blocking provision.