David Foster
Chicago Boyz
12/30/2011
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, writes:
This week, a bill that would create America’s first Internet censorship system is going to a full committee for a vote, and is likely to pass.
He is referring to the “Stop Online Piracy” act and the related “Protect IP” act. Links to information and analysis concerning these bills, for which heavy lobbying activities are underway, here.
This is dangerous stuff, and, as Tim notes, people need to be contacting their CongressCreatures now.
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GoDaddy bows to boycott, now ‘opposes’ SOPA copyright bill
Declan McCullagh
CNET.com
12/29/2011
“Dump GoDaddy Day” appears to have worked.
GoDaddy, the domain register targeted by online activists in response to its enthusiasm for a pair of Hollywood-backed copyright bills, has finally denounced the legislation in response to a boycott scheduled for today.
Warren Adelman, the company’s chief executive, said today that “GoDaddy opposes SOPA,” meaning the Stop Online Piracy Act, which is facing a House of Representatives committee vote next month.
A GoDaddy spokeswoman confirmed to CNET this afternoon that “we oppose PIPA, as well.” That’s the Senate bill known as Protect IP, which will be debated on the Senate floor January 24. (See CNET’s SOPA FAQ.)
The idea of boycotting GoDaddy began with a protest thread on Reddit and was aided by Jimmy Wales’ announcement last week that “Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy.” It inspired GoDaddyBoycott.org, which urged Internet users and companies to “boycott GoDaddy until they send a letter to Congress taking back any and all support of the House and Senate versions of the Internet censorship bill, both SOPA and PIPA.”…
This article continues at CNET.com
CNET has several other related articles here.
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netCoalition.com has an impressive 13-page PDF file entitled, Breadth of Opposition to Rogue Website Legislation and urges visitors to Visit www.ProtectInnovation.com
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At HotAir.com, Internet bigwigs consider a novel way to stop SOPA which links to the CNET article above:
Just congressional consideration of legislation that amounts to Internet censorship might have unintended consequences. As the House Judiciary Committee prepares to vote on the Stop Online Privacy Act and as the Senate prepares to debate the Protect IP Act on Jan. 24, opponents have demonstrated the creativity, efficiency and depth of their commitment to quash the bills…
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Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection writes, SOPA will make the whole internet like WordPress.com
Readers have been emailing me about the dangers of the Stop Online Privacy [wow, what a slip] Piracy Act but I’ve been a bit distracted. Here’s the concern from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The “Stop Online Piracy Act”/”E-PARASITE Act” (SOPA) and “The PROTECT IP Act” (PIPA) are the latest in a series of bills which would create a procedure for creating (and censoring) a blacklist of websites. These bills are updated versions of the “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act” (COICA), which was previously blocked in the Senate. Although the bills are ostensibly aimed at reaching foreign websites dedicated to providing illegal content, their provisions would allow for removal of enormous amounts of non-infringing content including political and other speech from the Web.
The various bills define different techniques for blocking “blacklisted” sites. Each would interfere with the Internet’s domain name system (DNS), which translates names like “www.eff.org” or “www.nytimes.com” into the IP addresses that computers use to communicate. SOPA would also allow rightsholders to force payment processors to cut off payments and advertising networks to cut ties with a site simply by sending a notice.
I’m not in a position to agree or disagree with the concern; I just haven’t looked into it carefully enough yet. But there are plenty of other people who are concerned, with a STOP SOPAmovement growing. Instapundit has numerous links.
Concerns about Google unilaterally being able to shut down a Blogger blog was one of the motivations for me moving to a self-hosted platform.
Now WordPress.com has pulled the plug on BareNakedIslam blog under pressure from CAIR. (Note, although Legal Insurrection uses WordPress software, this blog is not hosted on WordPress.com.)
If the claims about SOPA are accurate, then the entire internet will be like being hosted at WordPress.com, leaving politically incorrect blogs like Legal Insurrection at risk. There will be nowhere to run.
So out of an abundance of caution, consider me part of STOP SOPA.
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An email CAJ received today from a woman named Rebecca via The 9/12 Project NY Meet-up site alerted its recipients to the SOPA legislation. The email endorses a candidate to unseat its author, VA Congressman Bob Goodlatte. On her webpage Col. Karen Kwiatkowski outlines her stand against SOPA legislation:
Conservatives are fed-up with big government. Yet, Bob Goodlatte behaves like government isn’t big enough.
Consider this — Bob Goodlatte spent 2011 CO-AUTHORING and INTRODUCING the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA makes the federal government EVEN BIGGER.
If passed, SOPA will dramatically increase the federal government’s role in our lives, online and offline. It authorizes the Attorney General to block websites accused of copyright infringement from search engines and ISPs. And it allows the Attorney General to “commence action” against them without a court order. SOPA will result in fewer independent websites, blogs, media sources, start-ups and tech industry jobs. And as a result, lower quality.
How will it do this, you ask? Simple. It increases the cost of doing business for U.S. tech firms, payment network providers and advertisers.
In addition to increasing legal and compliance costs for small businesses, it also increases the size and scope of the federal government.
SOPA expands the State Department, Attorney General’s Office, Copyright Office and other agencies and creates a new set of bureaucrats. One we have never heard of before is the “intellectual property attaché.” IP Attachés will be trained and appointed to regional bureaus, embassies and diplomatic missions throughout the world. And they work with copyright holders at the expense of taxpayers.
Thanks to Bob Goodlatte, taxpayers will be footing the bill to ensure Mickey Mouse knock-offs are not brought to the US without the Walt Disney Corp’s authorization. Of course it will not work in preventing knock-offs. But it will destroy the Internet and economy.
Bob Goodlatte is a leading proponent of SOPA…
We urge you to follow the link to learn more about the Colonel’s campaign.
Related: Just what is Congress illegally downloading? Lawmakers apparently have little problem with going where they shouldn’t be going
Are members of Congress online pirates, stealing copyrighted material and viewing porn while they are, ironically, working on federal legislation to stop Internet theft of intellectual property?
The answer is yes, according to a report that examines the downloading habits – legal and illegal – of the U.S.House of Representatives.
Online monitors at TorrentFreak researched the surfing habits of lawmakers via YouHaveDownloaded.com in the analysis.
“YouHaveDownloaded is a treasure trove full of incriminating data on alleged BitTorrent pirates in organizations all across the world,” the report states.
The U.S. House was targeted for review since lawmakers are drafting the much-discussed Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which some fear could be a tool for mass censorship in the name of copyright protection…
Read more about this boatload of hypocrites at WorldNetDaily.
