The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA) was a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to the sale of infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S.[1] The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors.

[14] The term "information location tool" is borrowed from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is understood to refer to search engines but could cover other sites that link to content.

[15] The PROTECT IP Act says that an "information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order".

There's sort of a hysterical climate of criticism where people are objecting to something the bills don't do and are promoting noble causes like free speech and democracy but there is not much connection between what they are complaining about and what's in the legislation.

[33][34] Among those who oppose the legislation are the Mozilla Corporation,[35] Facebook,[35] Electronic Frontier Foundation,[36] Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, Reddit, Google,[37] Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch,[38] English Wikipedia,[39] Entertainment Consumers Association[40] and Uncyclopedia.

[42] A letter of opposition was signed by 130 technology entrepreneurs and executives and sent to Congress to express their concern that the law in its present form would "hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online".

[60][61] A group of Law professors, quoting Crocker's whitepaper, say that the PROTECT IP and Stop Online Piracy Acts could have the opposite of the intended impact, driving users to unregulated alternative DNS systems, and hindering the government from conducting legitimate Internet regulation.

This not only violates basic principles of due process by depriving persons of property without a fair hearing and a reasonable opportunity to be heard, it also constitutes an unconstitutional abridgement of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.

[62] The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) argued that concerns about the domain name remedy in the legislation were undercut by the already ongoing use of these approaches to counter spam and malware.

[63] According to Daniel Castro, an ITIF analyst, DNS blocking is practiced in several democracies without "breaking the internet", including the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and South Korea.

Requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website altogether due to an infringing page would raise free speech concerns regarding lawful content hosted elsewhere on the site.

[36] Google chairman Eric Schmidt stated that the measures called for in PIPA are overly simple solutions to a complex problem, and that the precedent set by pruning DNS entries is bad from the viewpoint of free speech and would be a step toward less permissive Internet environments, such as China's.

As the chairman of the company that owns the world's largest search engine, Schmidt said "If there is a law that requires DNSs to do X and it's passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it.

"[69] Constitutional law expert Floyd Abrams said, "The Protect IP Act neither compels nor prohibits free speech or communication... the bill sets a high bar in defining when a website or domain is eligible for potential actions by the Attorney General...".

"[71] A legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) notes concerns by opponents such as American Express and Google that the inclusion of a private cause of action would result in stifled Internet innovation, protect outdated business models and at the cost of an overwhelming number of suits from content producers.

[72] "Legislation should not include a private right of action that would invite suits by 'trolls' to extort settlements from intermediaries or sites who are making good faith efforts to comply with the law," Google Senior Vice-president and General Counsel Kent Walker has said in Congressional testimony.

[73] "Rogue sites jeopardize jobs for film and TV workers," according to the Motion Picture Association of America, which cites several government and independent industry studies on the effects of online piracy, including a report[74] by Envisional Ltd. which concluded that one quarter of the content on the internet infringes copyright.

[75][76][77] The Recording Industry Association of America points to a 2007 study[78] by the Institute for Policy Innovation which found that online piracy caused $12.5 billion in losses to the U.S. economy and more than 70,000 lost jobs.

These protests were initiated when Fight for the Future organized[83][84] thousands of the most popular websites in the world, including Reddit, Craigslist, and the English Wikipedia, to consider temporarily closing their content and redirecting users to a message opposing the proposed legislation.