Eddie.in The Website of Time Magazine's 2006 person of the year

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) explained dumbed down

I have been asked this question alot in the recent weeks FYI GODADDY CAN SUCK IT (more later).

what is sopa, well let me put it this way

I. The Setup

Most of the time when Productive Paula makes something to sell, she can only give it to one person. When she makes a cake, for example, she buys all the ingredients, combines them in her special way, and then sells it to the first person who comes along and offers her money. If somebody took a cake of hers without paying her for it, she would be very hurt and this obviously wouldn't be okay.

Some products aren't like this, though. Productive Paula is an excellent storyteller, and she holds daily storytimes where people come from all over to hear her new tales. Since it takes lots of effort for her to come up with the stories, she still wants to be paid. So, she charges everybody who comes to listen, even though each listener after the first doesn't actually cost her anything.

II. The Issue

Naturally, there are a ragtag group of scoundrels called the Pirates who love stories more than anything, but love a whole lot of things more than paying money. In fact, they dislike paying money quite a bit. Their friend Seeding Sam attends Paula's daily storytimes and decides to share the stories with the Pirates. They all gather down by the bay and Sam retells the stories for free, just to be a pal. It doesn't take much energy to do this, because Paula already did the work of coming up with the story.

Paula hears about this and is very upset. All these Pirates should be paying her for her stories, but instead their getting them for free from that wretched Sam! Even though they're not directly hurting her in any way (as they would be by stealing her cakes) she still feels like this is a kind of stealing, and isn't okay.

III. The Proposal

Furious, Paula calls up her good friend Politico Pete to put an end to this theft. Pete comes up with the following rules, which he together calls "SOPA":

• You're not allowed to tell a story you didn't write. That's just as bad as stealing cakes!
• If we think you're telling a story you didn't write, Helpful Hannah will stop telling visitors how to find you.
• If we think you're telling a story you didn't write, you have to stop telling stories until we're sure.

Pete is very happy, as this plan will help protect excellent people like Paula who make our country great.

IV. The Concerns

Seeding Sam is sad, but he understands why this is happening. He was never really sure that what he was doing was okay to begin with. The Pirates are also upset, but they understand. Paula needs to get paid somehow.

Helpful Hannah is a bit more upset. She doesn't like taking sides, she just wants to tell people how to get where they want to get. If she has to stop telling people how to get to some places, she will feel like she's not doing her job very well.

But the most upset of all is Startup Stan! He wants to be just like Paula, he just hasn't been around as long. He makes cakes, he tells stories, and some day he'll be just as well-known as Paula. But wait! If Paula overhears Stan saying a sentence that sounds a lot like a sentence in one of her stories, she can call up Politico Pete and have Stan shut down for a while, making people more likely to come to her. Even if she doesn't hear anything suspicious, she might get greedy and say she did, so that Stan gets shut down for a while and she gets more money! And Stan certainly can't call up Pete, because Pete and Paula are best friends!

 

fyi the above i borrowed from someone who already wrote it out the way i liked it.  I added this part below to help you out a bit more 

To extend the metaphor and explain one of the larger conflict points in more detail, let's meet Hosting Herbert.

Hosting Herbert runs a free service where you can submit a story to him and he will make it available for anyone to have story time, whenever they want. However, Herbert can't actually tell whether a story he gets from Seeding Sam is one of Seeding Sam's own stories or one of Paula's without doing a lot of work. Instead, Herbert warns Sam not to give him stories if Sam doesn't have permission to tell them. Then when Herbert gets a story from Sam, he trusts him and starts letting people hear it.

If Paula notices that Herbert is telling one of her stories without her permission, she complains to Herbert and then he stops telling the story and apologizes to Paula. Herbert can't get in trouble for this because of "Safe Harbor" provisions in the current US laws.

Part of SOPA is that Politico Pete wants to remove the Safe Harbor provisions. Then, if Paula catches Herbert telling one of her stories that he got from Sam, Paula could ask Politico Pete to shut down Herbert's story-sharing business! Herbert's friends are concerned that Herbert could lose his way of life because Sam disregarded the rules and Herbert didn't notice.