http://judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm
Senate Judiciary Committee Members
Patrick J. Leahy
Chairman, D-Vermont
Biography
Herb Kohl
D-Wisconsin
Biography
Jeff Sessions
Ranking Member, R-Alabama
Biography
Dianne Feinstein
D-California
Biography
Orrin G. Hatch
R-Utah
Biography
Russ Feingold
D-Wisconsin
Biography
Chuck Grassley
R-Iowa
Biography
Arlen Specter
D-Pennsylvania
Biography
Jon Kyl
R-Arizona
Biography
Chuck Schumer
D-New York
Biography
Lindsey Graham
R-South Carolina
Biography
Dick Durbin
D-Illinois
Biography
John Cornyn
R-Texas
Biography
Benjamin L. Cardin
D-Maryland
Biography
Tom Coburn
R-Oklahoma
Biography
Sheldon Whitehouse
D-Rhode Island
Biography
Amy Klobuchar
D-Minnesota
Biography
Ted Kaufman
D-Delaware
Biography
Al Franken
D-Minnesota
Biography
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: Bret Clark
To: WISPA General List
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:42 AM
Subject: [WISPA] Fwd: EFF needs your help to stop the Senate's DNScensorship
bill
This came on the NANOG list for those who don't subscribe to that
list...thought I'd pass it along here. Looks like you need to respond to Peter
by today 4PM EST.
Bret
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: EFF needs your help to stop the
Senate's DNS censorship bill
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:40:25 -0700
From: Peter Eckersley <p...@eff.org>
To: na...@nanog.org
Dear network operators,
I apologise for a posting that contains some politics; I hope you'll agree
that it also has fairly substantial short-to-medium term operational
implications.
As you may or may not have heard, there is a censor-DNS-to-enforce-copyright
bill that is going to be passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee this
Wednesday. It will require service providers to censor the DNS entries of
blacklisted domains where piracy is deemed too "central" to the site's purpose.
Senators are claiming that they haven't heard any opposition to this bill, and
it is being sponsored by 14 of the 19 committee members. We believe it needs
to be stopped, and we need your help.
What EFF needs right now is sign-ons to an open letter, from the engineers who
helped build the Internet in the first place. The text of our letter is
below. If you agree with it and would like to sign, please send me an email
at p...@eff.org, with your name and a one-line summary of what part of the
Internet you have helped to design, implement, debug or run.
This is URGENT. I need your sign-ons by 4:00pm, US Eastern time (1pm
Pacific), tomorrow. Unfortunately, the civil liberties community has been
ambushed by this bill.
You can find out more details on the bill here: https://eff.org/coica
---------------------------
Open letter from Internet engineers to members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee:
We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called
the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and
protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We're
just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the
Internet, has brought with it.
We are writing to oppose the Committee's proposed new Internet censorship and
copyright bill. If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the
Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of
tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously
harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key
Internet infrastructure. In exchange for this, the bill will introduce
censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers
while hampering innocent parties' ability to communicate.
All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to
restrict, but this bill will be particularly egregious in that regard because
it causes entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or
files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be
blacklisted under this bill. These problems will be enough to ensure that
alternative name-lookup infrastructures will come into widespread use, outside
the control of US service providers but easily used by American citizens.
Errors and divergences will appear between these new services and the current
global DNS, and contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate
the people using them. These problems will be widespread and will affect sites
other than those blacklisted by the American government.
The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open
Internet, both domestically and abroad. We can't have a free and open Internet
without a global domain name system that sits above the political concerns and
objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US
has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because
America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free
expression. If the US suddenly begins to use its central position in the DNS
for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the
consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.
Senators, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be
endangered in this way, and implore you to put this bill aside.
--
Peter Eckersley p...@eff.org
Senior Staff Technologist Tel +1 415 436 9333 x131
Electronic Frontier Foundation Fax +1 415 436 9993
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