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American Censorship: IP / SOPA Act Breaks the Internet
The Senate is scheduled to vote on the internet censorship bill on
Tuesday, January 24th, and unless we can find 41 senators to block
the vote, it is going to pass. Will you meet with your senators
during the January recess and ask them to vote it down?
Find out more at http://AmericanCensorship.org
Let your voice be heard at http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa
UPDATE:
January 18th, 2012 was the largest online protest in history to stop the internet censorship bills, SOPA & PIPA. On January 20th, Congress shelved the bills indefinitely. If they return, we must be ready.
SOPA — The Battle Lines Have Been Drawn
Senator Joseph Lieberman’s long-time wish of having government-regulated internet content monitoring has been catapulted into the realm of legislative possibilities, as bipartisan support has advanced H.R. 3261 – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The buzz around the reddit-sphere has it that big-name websites are contemplating a service blackout if legislation is approved that amounts to private sector censorship. There are some big names with a lot of clout in this emerging solidarity movement, but even with eroding corporate support caused by a social media-fueled public outcry, the pro-SOPA coalition remains a Goliath.
The proposed legislation has the potential, however, to do much more than just interfere with newfangled pastimes. Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has compiled “the people’s” list of grievances:
Civil libertarians are also worried about privacy invasion, which they say would be institutionalized by SOPA. The bill could also be used to undermine the work of human rights advocates and whistle blowers by taking away anonymous (and free) channels of information sharing, the EFF points out.
Supporters of SOPA include all major entertainment industry unions and trade groups including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Viacom and the other mega-media/publishing companies have thrown their weight behind the bill. Despite recent reports to the contrary, major players in the video game industry have not withdrawn their support of SOPA, as the industry’s largest association, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), is still on board.
A bevy of trademarked companies like Nike and L’Oreal eagerly jumped on the SOPA bandwagon early on, but many have reconsidered their public position on the bill after domain name provider Go Daddy was compelled to reverse its stance on SOPA when it was fiscally injured by a Wikipedia and reddit-led boycott of their services. It took approximately 37,000 former Go Daddy domain holders to transfer their business to Namecheap before Go Daddy saw the light.
A contingent of more “genuine” SOPA opposition does exist.
Silicon Valley reps have declared in an open letter to former Senator Chris Dodd that he, the new head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), was correct when he asserted that there isn’t really a “Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley fight” in all of this. The letter urged Congress to drop all SOPA and PIPA related censorship ideas and open a dialogue about resolving any detrimental effects of electronic media piracy outside of Washington DC, so the “focus can be on getting something done, rather than another round of ‘manufactured conflict.’ ” In essence, tech and internet innovators have declared their position of strength if hostilities, so to speak, are initiated by lawmakers.
Google has proposed an alternative (and many would say more sensible) policy of going after the revenue sources of digital pirates instead of pushing what some believe to be de facto web censorship. For Ebay, Wikipedia, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and other well known sites, a “nuclear option” (aka simultaneous blackout) is on the table. Only time will tell if such drastic pushback is employed.
The House is scheduled to take up the SOPA debate January 24. The complete list of official SOPA supporters can be found here.
Source: IVN
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