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Washington Post Column Incredulous That Congress Is Considering Censoring The Internet
from the mainstream-america-is-waking-up dept
It appears that more and more in mainstream America are waking up to the horrors of SOPA and PROTECT IP. Dominic Basulto, writing in the Washington Post notes that the debate over SOPA sends an "ugly message" to the rest of the world about the US:
Imagine a country where the government is able to shut down Web sites at the slightest provocation, where elected representatives invoke fears of "overseas pirates" to defend the interests of domestic industries, and where Internet companies like Google must cave in to the demands of government censors or risk being shut down.

No, we are not talking about China, North Korea or Iran — we are talking about the United States, where legislators in both the House and Senate are attempting to push through new anti-piracy legislation by year-end that would benefit Hollywood at the expense of Silicon Valley.
Basulto also makes the point clearly. Supporters are "[confusing] 'piracy protection' and 'censorship.'"

He goes on to point out that this also shows "the failure on the part of lawmakers to understand how the Internet works."
This new legislation, if enacted, would strike at the very core of the way the Internet has been structured. Sharing, openness, and participation are at the core of what the Internet represents. When it comes to a choice between an open Internet and an Internet of walled gardens patrolled by government censors, there is no doubt which is preferable. As Booz & Co. pointed out in a recent study, the SOPA legislation could lead to a decline in Internet innovation.

The Chinese government attempts to portray dissidents as "pirates" and "rogues" outside the system. Entertainment interests are taking a similar approach, and have found what they consider to be the perfect bogeymen: the "rogue" sites and "overseas pirates" who steal content and make it available elsewhere on the Internet at a cheaper price. Under the cover of protecting intellectual property and making the Internet safe again for users, they risk destroying what makes the Internet so special and attractive to innovators and investors alike.
A really strong piece in a very mainstream source. This isn't just about a few "pirates" complaining -- as SOPA defenders would have you believe. This is a widespread recognition that censorship and massive regulation of the internet, just because Hollywood refuses to adapt, is not in anyone's best interest.

Washington Post Column Incredulous That Congress Is Considering Censoring The Internet | Techdirt

---------- Post added at 07:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ----------

American Censorship Day: Fight To Save Free Speech On The Internet


American Censorship Day: Fight To Save Free Speech On The Internet
Author: Josh Tylerpublished: 2011-11-16 11:43:06
Congress is holding hearings today on something called the Stop Online Piracy Act and if you haven’t heard of it yet, don’t worry, you’re going to hear a lot more about it in the coming weeks and months. If it passes it will change your life forever, by destroying the internet.

You can read the entire bill as proposed right here, but in short if it passes it would make it nearly impossible for most websites, particularly independently owned sites without teams of lawyers and social sites which permit user generated content, to operate. It gives unprecedented power to copyright holders to essentially shut down the operation of any website they want, on a whim. It does this by eliminating the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Those provisions protect website owners who act in good faith to comply with established copyright standards.

EFF has a great description of just exactly how this would kill pretty much any independent website. Here’s an excerpt from their breakdown:
If an IP rightsholder thinks you meet the criteria and that it is in some way harmed, it can send a notice claiming as much to the payment processors and ad services you rely on. Once they get it, they have 5 days to choke off your financial support. Of course, the payment processors and ad networks won’t be able to fine-tune their response so that only the allegedly infringing portion of your site is affected, which means your whole site will be under assault. And, it makes no difference that no judge has found you guilty of anything or that the DMCA safe harbors would shelter your conduct if the matter ever went to court.

In essence, if a corporation’s attorney sees something, anything on your website he doesn’t like, he’d have the legal right to shut your website down whether you’re guilty or not. In the past what happened instead was that the copyright holder would send a DMCA claim, which then gave the website owner time to remove whatever potentially infringing content was found on their site.

Speaking from experience, the truth is that even now a large percent of the DMCA claims sent out are actually bogus. We’ve gotten some of that type ourselves here on Cinema Blend, notices claiming copyright infringement when there was none, notices which were actually just some over-eager corporate attorney trying to use legal scare tactics in an attempt to limit our right to free speech. Now those attorneys won’t need to use scare tactics, they’ll simply pull the plug, whenever they feel like it. Guilty until proven innocent.

Unlike a lot of the more extreme and ridiculous internet censorship legislation which has run through the United States Congress over the years, by all accounts this one has a very real chance of passing. This in spite of the fact that dozens of law professors have pronounced the entire bill unconstitutional. But governments and corporations want control over what you're allowed to say, and they still haven’t found a way to get a real stranglehold over the internet. If SOPA passes, they’ll get it. If it goes through, many of the sites you visit now, even sites like Facebook and Tumblr, will no longer be able to exist. The only way to stop it, is to take action.

Get more information and join the protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act by visiting AmericanCensorship.org. Better yet, write your local representative and let them know that you oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act.

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finnaly someone who understands and isnt ignorant

And I'm English :p