To honor today’s blackout by websites across cyberspace objecting to the possible passage of the Internet-killing SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills now in Congress, I won’t be posting anything today except the item below. Come back tomorrow for fresh content.
Major Media Blackout to Protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
Here’s what you need to know about two controversial internet anti-piracy bills moving through Congress and the massive backlash against them.
Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
Jan. 17, 2012Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world, will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to “go dark” today in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently being debated in Congress. “What these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites,” says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “What we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net.” Chief technology officials in the Obama administration have expressed concern about any “legislation that…undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” But the bills’ main backers—Hollywood movie studios and music publishers—want to stop the theft of their creative content, and the bills have widespread bipartisan support. A vote on SOPA is on hold in the House now, as the Senate is still scheduled vote on PIPA next Tuesday.
Read the rest here — and it is important if you want to preserve a free Internet.