White House to respond to petition urging veto of online piracy bill

An online petition urging President Obama to veto a controversial anti-online piracy bill has passed the number of signatures required to receive an official response.

The petition, which is on the White House's official "We the People" page, urges the president to veto the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and "any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information." The petition now has more than 34,000 signatures. It needed 25,000 before Jan. 17 for the White House to issue an official response. The White House petition, which gained popularity on the discussion site Reddit, includes a link to an image of a person behind bars and the headline, "This is a copyrighted image." The link is meant to demonstrate that websites should not be blocked just because their users post copyrighted material. "It would be ridiculous for an [Internet service provider] to block the entire whitehouse.gov domain on court order because a single user posted a link," the petition author wrote. "It is difficult for any web administrator to know which links to copyrighted material are done with permission."