US Congress considering bill to censor internet.

Yup, there is a lot of money and power up for grabs, and if there isn't sufficient public outcry then they can and will make it happen.   They will typically try to justify this by saying "its for the children" inventing some child pornography case for example.  

 

Examples of abuse:

1) Apple has already coerced police departments to violate the law and do their personal bidding, such as in the case of the Gizmodo editor who got a hold of the iPhone 4 that one of their interns forgot at a bar while intoxicated at a birthday party.  With this law in place, they would likely simply use their influence to censor any leaked information about their products via the four major ISPs within minutes, while destroying those merely doing as the press is supposed to and offering sneak-peaks when available.  

 

2) There are a plethora of sites that rely on thousands of contributors from the internet, but under this law a single infraction from one of those users could have the entire site blacklisted.   Such a threat would cause social networking, search engine, forum, and video/image hosting sites like Youtube to create draconian policies being extremely harsh and unreasonable with its customers for fear of lost revenue.    This also would more likely be used against smaller hosts and startups that could not afford the legal fees to defend themselves, stifling innovation and competition.   In other words "fair use" would be irrelevant, as sites would gravitate to "better safe than sorry" and create bogus rules.

 

3) Smaller news outlets and blogs would likely experience the same effect as "the great firewall of China" that severely limits free speech.   It is bad enough that online news outlets and bloggers are under law not considered journalists and thus not afforded any protection under freedom of the press, although they are clearly and rapidly becoming the most widely used news outlets.    Controversial sites such as wikileaks that leaks information about war crimes, human rights abuses, and political corruption around the globe would surely be the first to be banned.

 

My fear is that not enough people will realize how serious this really is.  

Not that it has stopped them before, especially when it comes to "national security", but Laurence Tribe, the professor of constitutional law at Harvard, has also declared it to be unconstitutional:

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/75153093/Tribe-Legis-Memo-on-SOPA-12-6-11-1

 

 

Sounds like a suppression of free speech to me. It also smells of "guilty until proven innocent", which is contrary to the laws in this country. Very bad idea.

They are going to vote on one version of it tomorrow, PIPA. Wikipedia, amongst other websites, are going black tomorrow (today...it's already black) to protest the bills. Earl found a good, short, easy to understand explanation of what the bills would entail here: http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa

At least the White House has come out against it. Hopefully that still carries some weight in Washington...or at least more weight than RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) who are really strongarming the federal government to pass this trash heap into law. They can't go after the foreign websites that are hosting pirated content, so they want to come down hard on anything in the States that might (or might not) knowingly (or not) support or have any inkling of involvement with such websites. In the process, these bills would open the doors to censorship across the internet. MPAA and RIAA don't care. Hopefully the people in Washington do, or at least care what their constituents think.

If you are a US Citizen and disagree with SOPA and PIPA, WRITE YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE TO LET THEM KNOW!! Here's a link that makes it so easy there's no excuse for you not to be involved in the political & lawmaking process.

Thanks, Heidi.

 

This needs to be posted in the lounge so more people can see. I think the name of this bill makes people thing that if they dont pirate music or tv shows or movies they are safe and wont even notice! But they are soooo very wrong! https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/  SIGN IT! Call your Reps. Spread the word on facebook! Make your voice heard!

Keep writing to your members of Congress, as it seems to be working:

Web Protests Piracy Bills, and Senators Change Course
SOPA Protests Gain Steam as Web Activists Flex Growing Clout


SOPA Bill Faces New Hurdles