The new bill aimed at protecting intellectual property rights on the Internet would make the unauthorized publication of copyrighted content on the Internet a felony. It gained national attention when bloggers began to posit that its specific wording could land Justin Bieber in lockup for the unauthorized YouTube covers that initially made him famous. Since music selections in most online ski edits are used without permission, the skiers could theoretically be subject to the same punishments.

That exposure isn't totally new, of course. Like edit-dropping athletes of today, established video companies at one time relied on their obscurity, as opposed to express written consent, for music use. "Ski film companies didn't always have to license their music," explains Drew Lederer, a cinematographer who has worked extensively with major ski film companies such as Level 1 and Poor Boyz Productions. "Back in the day you could use a song in an online video or movie and it was fine, because you where flying under the radar and no one was checking up on you. That's not the case anymore. Everything we do now is scrutinized for copyright infringement."

Major film companies now take special care to obtain consent for the songs they use in order to limit their legal liability. Still, some have had to pay back royalties for unlicensed songs used years earlier, in the days of flying under the radar.

It stands to reason that applying the same liability to individual skiers — and adding the threat of felony charges, as the SOPA technically could — might ring the death knell of the online edit.

Or it might not. "I don't think that [SOPA] would affect those forms of edits at all," says Freedle Coty, a long-time cinematographer and editor at Level 1 Productions. According to Coty, even if it were eventually signed into law, the language of SOPA is still no match for that time-honored tradition in freeskiing media, flying under the radar. He predicts that the edits will stay safe from present and future intellectual property legislation, "Because the vast majority are not for any sort of monetary gain."