Visualisations have been drafted in to support the attempts by prominent US entrepreneurs to scuttle the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). An open letter was signed by a who's who of Internet pioneers including Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Sergey Brin (Google), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), David Filo and Jerry Yang (Yahoo!) and Craig Newmark, (craigslist). The founders of eBay, Flickr, YouTube and PayPal were also co-signatories.

As their letter said:

We've all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.

However we're worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act - which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online - will undermine that framework.

The Behind SOPA: What It Means for Business and Innovation visualisation was created by BusinessInsurance.org.

Summaries of PIPA and SOPA can be found on DocuTicker.