The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith [R-TX] and 12 initial co-sponsors. This bill is intended to help U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders fight online piracy of intellectual property.

The new Congress will be live broadcasting their first meeting on Facebook. The announcement was made by incoming House Speaker John Boehner (pictured above). The live-stream will be at noon on tomorrow. To view the meeting, go to the “Pledge to America” Facebook page (www.facebook.com/pledgetoamerica) to see the GOP-controlled House. [CNN]

LimeWire has sent a response (PDF from Wired.com) to Congress where he explains the steps that the P2P company is taking to prevent document sharing.  This will prevent users from sharing government documents or inadvertently sharing tax return letters.

LimeWire had to add extra safeguards due to Congress re-opening an investigation against the company.  Information regarding President Barack Obama’s helicopter “Marine One,” along with medical records and tax return information had leaked over the a P2P network recently.

“LimeWire 5 by default does not share documents even if a user purposely attempts to do so,” stated Gorton. “LimeWire will not allow it. In fact, LimeWire 5 [released in December] goes so far as to automatically un-share documents that a user may have shared using a 4.x version of LimeWire.”

A response was demanded from Gorton by The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  This is because Marine One data was downloaded by an IP address in Iran.  Older versions of LimeWire by default asked if you would like to share folders containing audio, video, documents, and software.

[via Wired]