Protect IP Act

Protect IP is also known as Bill S.968. It was introduced on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy and 11 initial co-sponsors including Republicans and Democrats. Its goal is to give the government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing our couterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the United States.

If this bill is passed, you could be fined for steaming images and video games or related media online.

Before these bills, all use of material was considered "fair use" under the copyright law, however tens of thousands of videos currently available online featuring game play from popular games like Call Of Duty, Halo, Starcraft and even Minecraft could be made illegal under these new laws.

Although Minecraft is a creative site and these bills will most likely not effect it too much, you could still be prosecuted not by the company that owns the game, but the government divisions entrusted to enforce these laws, making any lack of action from the developers useless.

Another feature of this bill is that competitor developers could file lawsuits in order to destroy the playerbase of another game in order to increase their own sales.

Rather than requesting the takedown of certain hosted material, intellectual property owners can go directly for the jugular: marketing and revenue for the entire site. So long as the intellectual property holders include some o specific factso supporting their infringement claim, ad networks and payment processors will have five days to cut off contact with the website in question.

For more information on this "Protect IP" act check out the wiki page and do your research!

Wiki Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_IP_Act

I have also listed three different petitions listed through out the internet, one even hosted on the whitehouse website, please take the time to sign this petition to stop this bill!

Petition: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/stop-e-parasite-act/SWBYXX55
Petition: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/
Petition: http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/protectip_docs