----- Original Message -----
From: The John Birch Society
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 1:00 PM
Subject: Stop Internet Censorship Bill
Stop Internet Censorship Bill
There certainly hasn’t been any lack of attempts by the U.S. government
-- elected
Representatives and Senators, and White House -- to try to regulate/control the
Internet in
this session of Congress. It seems a new cybersecurity bill pops up at least
once a week.
The latest one catching all the attention is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA),
H.R. 3261.
SOPA is a beefed-up version of the failed Protect IP Act.
Whereas SOPA is heavily supported by Hollywood producers, the recording
industry, and
large media companies and their lobbyists as a way to protect their copyrighted
material,
SOPA's opponents include major Internet giants like Google, Yahoo, Facebook,
and Twitter, as
well as civil liberties groups, Tea Party groups, and investors.
Under the proposal any website, including search engines like Google,
could be forced
to delist whole domains on the basis of a copyright claim by a content
provider. Internet
Providers would be forced into monitoring websites that contain user-generated
content
because embedding and posting and sharing videos, etc., could be a violation of
SOPA. This
would be a severe limiting of the currently used and understood Fair Use
doctrine.
Unauthorized streaming would become a felony. And SOPA could eliminate the
alternative media
so prevalent on the Internet for simply unknowingly embedding unauthorized
videos or links;
perhaps even quoting from copyrighted material would be enough to “delist” the
domain name
of the website.
David Ulevich, an expert in Internet security calls the legislation
“dangerous” for
three reasons: 1) “there is no way to censor only illegal content without
harming legitimate
uses on sites as well,” 2) it will create a firewall to “censor websites
similar to those
countries we criticize for the same behavior,” and 3) it will "burden companies
with an
onerous level of liability for all user-generated content.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said this about the bill: "It could set a
precedent for
further control and censorship of the Internet by foreign governments, and risk
the
fragmentation of the global domain name system.” Reporters Without Borders said
the bill is
“clearly hostile to freedom of expression.” While a Harvard Business Review
blogger stated
the bill would “give America its very own version of the Great Firewall of
China,” because
of the imposition of content filtering and blocking without any independent
judicial
control. That’s right. According to a C-Net analysis of the bill, SOPA “would
let content
owners bypass cops, courts, and any semblance of due process, and ‘disappear’
entire Web
domains like some kind of privatized secret police force.”
The bill, so broadly written, is a danger to Internet freedom, has
devastating
penalties that are rather disconnected from alleged violations of the bill,
could certainly
kill any new e-commerce or normal Internet usage, issues rather vague
requirements to
Internet Service Providers, and has the potential for International
consequences that could
result in court challenges by foreign countries, all because the measure is so
completely
out of sync with the current Internet structure and how it operates.
The Internet has become an incredible force that promotes free speech and
alternative
views and information. Also, according to a "Dear Colleague" letter written by
Representatives Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) on November
8, 2011:
"Online innovation and commerce were responsible for 15 percent of U.S. GDP
growth from 2004
to 2009, according to the McKinsey Global Institute." However, after reviewing
SOPA, many
venture capitalists say there is no way they would invest money in the Internet
under the
risky conditions SOPA would impose.
Speak out about Internet censorship by contacting your Representative and
Senators
immediately, as this bill is sure to see more action before the end of the
year. It is a
government-interference Internet bill of great magnitude that would in fact
destroy the
Internet as we now know it, creating a new bureaucracy with the U.S. Government
as the
Internet police.
Thanks,
Your friends at The John Birch Society
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