SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)

Responding to entertainment industry complaints about what was seen as widespread copyright infringement by Internet users, Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives a bill that threatened to shut down access to Web pages that contained any copyrighted information without the permission of the copyright holder. For example, if your private Web page was streaming the complete Iron Man 2 movie, access to your page would be blocked until you either removed the movie or got the permission of Marvel Entertainment (or the current copyright holder) to show the film for free.

Sounds fair, right?

What were the issues surrounding SOPA? What is the main concern? How did Wikipedia become involved?

The notion does sound fair but I feel like it would become misused along with every other piece of legislation that gets pushed through without anyone actually paying attention. If someone is streaming a full length movie and doesn't have permission, fine, take it down. But is that where it stops? What about if someone is reviewing some of the cinematography and is showing a sample clip in the corner of their screen as the talk about it? Does this fall under SOPA? What about a celebrity's name like Donald Trump? Or logos like the millions of custom Jeep stickers sold.

Not to mention they aren't really targeting actual pirates. If the film and music industry really gave a damn and were genuinely the only parties involved, they would go after torrenting and streaming sites. Instead, big industry will most likely take advantage and go after domain names that may have a piece of any media they don't want shared under the vague copyright laws and refuse to give legitimate reason. When I was in high school, a female friend of mine showed me how Justin Bieber got famous for singing a Chris Brown song on Youtube but under SOPA, he would be targeted and given a heavy handed punishment instead of being allowed to rise to the top (however annoying he may be).

Wikipedia is involved because they would be a huge target. Their site is a mass of information on thousands of different topics, including anything and everything that can be deemed "copyright infringement". This means the pages about the history of Jeeps, Chevys, Fords or anything could be removed because their logos and/or related media are all over the site.

This sounds like grounds for the government to bully people into silence on just about anything they want for whatever reason they want because they are greedy.

This becomes extremely dangerous. What we post, education or entertainment wise, to a degree falls under our rights. Infringement of said rights are definitely unacceptable. However, allowing individuals to steal from one another is also unacceptable and infringes upon the rights of the person who created the original content. I think the primary issue is the limits that could possibly created. For example, Wiki may be severely limited in what is allowed to be posted. Information and knowledge previously shared and used to assist the public's knowledge would be removed and taken down. Personally, I often use Wiki as a branching off point for additional research. Due to the nature of Wiki, with the public being allowed to dictate the information that is published. With the limitations, the public would be severely limited and in one way, almost punished for publishing.
In terms of entertainment, much of what individuals post could fall into copyright strikes. Many youtube channels such as Cinemasins, a very popular channel that pokes fun at the flaws of movies, may be effected if such laws were put into place.