About 93 percent of American teenagers use the Internet on a regular basis, according to 2010 report published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

"Over the past 10 years, teens and young adults have been consistently the two groups most likely to go online," the report indicates. As such, any changes to the Web will inevitably affect users ages 13 to 19 — the Internet's largest user demographic.

Recently, Congress has taken up arms against advertising that sponsors both foreign companies selling illicit products, and websites that earn an income on pirated content. A House bill, called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and a Senate bill, called the Protect Internet Protocol Act (PIPA), have recently garnered attention for their proposed strategies in dealing with Internet piracy and online copyright infringement.

The two bills are similar in their goals of blocking websites that offer pirated goods and services.

Advertisements are among the most consistent and common sights on the Internet. Web development group Web-source.net explains that "Web advertising may be one of the most effective advertising methods used, as it provides the ability to target specific markets while they are surfing the Internet."

Last August, Google agreed to pay
$500 million in a lawsuit that arose from advertisements the search engine hosted for Canadian pharmacies that illegally sold medication to Americans. At a time when the U.S. is suffering what the White House describes as a "prescription drug abuse crisis," this scandal quickly gained media attention and notoriety throughout the U.S.

The two bills aim at preventing similar situations, but that's not the only item on their agenda.

Copyright infringement on the Internet has come under attack in recent years due to its perceived affects on the entertainment industry. In a 2007 report, the Institute for Policy Innovation said that the "piracy of sound recordings" was costing the U.S. economy
$12.5 billion a year in lost revenue and jobs.

Eric Bangeman of arstechnica.com, a technology news and entertainment website, doesn't agree with the report's findings. Bangeman cited a study by the Journal of Political Economy, which showed that music downloading on peer-to-peer websites "did not correlate to a negative effect on music sales."

A crackdown on pirated media could impact teenagers, several reports indicate. A 2008 survey conducted by the University of Hertfordshire concluded that teenagers were likely to pirate music.

"Illegal copying in some form is undertaken by 96 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed, falling to 89 percent of those ages 14 to 17," the report indicated. "On average, every iPod or digital music player contained 842 illegally copied songs. The proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61 percent among 14- to 17-year-olds. In addition, 14 percent of CDs [1 in 7] in a young person's collection are copied."

If these results are accurate, it can be inferred that teenagers play a large role in the pirating of music.

"I personally don't find anything wrong with online piracy," said Aaron Newsom-Pino, 17, a senior at the Academy for Technology and the Classics. "If the bill [SOPA] is passed, I wouldn't be affected personally, because I have never pirated any form of digital media."

Newsom-Pino said that he uses the Internet mostly to watch YouTube videos, for social interaction via Facebook, to keep up with news, or to research European history.

Daniel Schiffmiller, 16, a junior at Santa Fe High School, said that tougher laws will not be helpful. "It will definitely keep many [music] artists from getting heard," Schiffmiller said. Many independent and underground artists have been able to reach larger audiences because of Internet music sharing.

The House bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice to seek federal court injunctions against foreign-based websites that offer pirated services.

If the court agreed that such an injunction was lawful based on the website's activities, then Internet service providers would have to block their customers' ability to connect to that website. Advertisements on other Web pages linking to the foreign site would have to be taken down. Search engines also would not be allowed to display that website in search result listings.

Opposition to these bills comes from a number of sources, including Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who said the bills would "effectively break the Internet." Reddit Chief Executive Alexis Ohanian blogged that the House bill "could potentially obliterate the entire tech industry — a job-creating industry."

As of Saturday, Congress had shelved the House bill; the Senate bill, however, will be up for discussion when the Senate convenes on Monday.

Vaughn Fortier-Shultz is a senior at Santa Fe High School. You can reach him at moosemanxl@gmail.com.