Congress Wants to Censor the Internet. Tell Them No.

[googleplus]

The internet is the most important innovation for democracy of our time. With the internet citizens are empowered to be creators of information, not just passive consumers, and they?re networked so exchange happens peer-to-peer, not through some central authority. These properties threaten the model of control that has long been pushed by authorities, be they corporate or governmental.

The fight over openness on the internet is a fundamental struggle about who has power in society. Today in the United States, the House of Representatives is taking a major step towards creating the first ever U.S. internet censorship system, using the same DNS technology that China uses for censorship. The bill is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and it would allow the government to demand ISPs and search engines to block websites and give private companies power to cut off access to sites without taking legal action. It?s receiving a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee today and is expected to get a vote in the full House soon.
The bill threatens every site that allows users to post content by undermining long-standing DMCA safeharbors that currently protect sites that operate in good faith to remove copyright-infringing content. Under the language of the bill, a single infringing link posted by a user to would be enough to allow the government or a corporation to shut down the entire site. What makes the bill an especially powerful tool for censorship is that it gives legal immunity to companies that cut off sites as long as they have a ?reasonable belief? that the site contains infringing material, or even if they believe the site is not doing enough to fight infringement. (For a more detailed rundown of problems and implications of the bill, see this 2-page summary from the Center for Democracy and Technology.)

The powers of the Stop Online Piracy Act are aimed exactly at the aspects of the internet that give it its democratic power. If it becomes law, our platform for decentralized, vertical exchange of ideas falls under the grips of the old power structures it threatens. This is the most important piece of internet legislation in U.S. history.

The Participatory Politics Foundation is proud to be a part of the American Censorship Day coalition. Please join us in taking action to stop this bill today. If you have a website of any size, add the Censorship Day splash page to spread this to your audience (info here). In addition, we urge you to take a minute to contact your members of Congress and tell them that you oppose this bill.

As it stands, this bill is going to become law very soon. Congressional leaders from both parties and in both chambers support it, and it has backing from big-money campaign donors from unions to Hollywood to financial companies. If we don?t fight back right now, the internet will forever be a less open, more censored space.

http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2430-Congress-Wants-to-Censor-the-Internet-Tell-Them-No-

https://www.mozilla.org/sopa/

googleplus Reviewed by googleplus on 20th Nov 2011. Congress Wants to Censor the Internet. Tell Them No. http://i28.lulzimg.com/ce2af05b42.png The internet is the most important innovation for democracy of our time. With the internet citizens are empowered to be creators of information, not just passive consumers, and they?re networked so exchange happens peer-to-peer, not through some central authority. These properties threaten the model of control that has long been pushed by authorities, be they corporate or governmental. The fight over openness on the internet is a fundamental Rating: 5

[EsotorisK]

They are simply mad

[foxman]

Do need to censor the internet, Just Ban warez!

[EsotorisK]

To ban warez, they need to ban the sources of sharing them. So cut the internet down and get some real job.

[newuploader]

Do need to censor the internet, Just Ban warez!

lol, why you do warez when you're agains't to warez? you act like you don't really do warez. acting up in everythread like this, I see you posting stop warez and get real job, why? you wanna make a road for yourself? why not you get a real job and stop wasting time like this posting the same everywhere? 80% of internet is full of warez, stop bugging the same everywhere now

OP: congress is more worried about piracy than our own economy. damn politicians..!

[ifirstdoz]

Damn Bloodsuckers.......what they want to do is ban warez and then raise price of internet using warez as an excuse.Thus they get more money from us , the population and steal more!!!

EDIT:
Warez have given people the chance to judge the value of materials and if they really like then they buy it to support the creator.
If Piracy was such an issue microsoft , IDM and other software companies should have closed their doors long back
Same for movies , millions of $$ if pure profits are made from movies , only a small percentage of it(less than 1%) is lost in piracy

[foxman]

lol, why you do warez when you're agains't to warez? you act like you don't really do warez. acting up in everythread like this, I see you posting stop warez and get real job, why? you wanna make a road for yourself? why not you get a real job and stop wasting time like this posting the same everywhere? 80% of internet is full of warez, stop bugging the same everywhere now

OP: congress is more worried about piracy than our own economy. damn politicians..!

I am a webmaster you see, I like money, so when I see someone showing their earnings, whatever it maybe, uploading, blackhat, whitehat, grayhat....

I only say days of warez are getting numbered. Only Tight Policy from US, backed by europe can bring down warez. There are many people getting snuggly upto file uploading stuff, like 99.99% will ultimately fail in making money via cash whores. Only few succeed, there are much better things to work for rather than warez upload! Just my opinion.

[Tushavi]

if warez go down, i study software enginering.

[Th3KiNG]

if it's goes down... or not I Don't Give Fuck anymore.

[Sukhvinder]

Congress ki maa ka.....