Draconian Anti-Piracy Censorship Bill Passes Senate Committee

[Shawn101589]

CALL YOUR LEGISLATORS

Thursday afternoon the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the new Internet Blacklist Bill -- the PROTECT IP ACT.

Within minutes, Demand Progress ally Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed what's known as a "hold" on the bill, buying us some time and drawing attention to our cause.

PROTECT IP would let the government force Internet service providers, search engines, and other “information location tools” to block users’ access to sites that have been accused of copyright infringement — creating a China-like censorship regime here in the United States.

Eeek.

Link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2725672/posts

 

[-Jumpman-]

I support you (not american tho).

 

[Praxis]

I support you (not american tho).

I miss living in your country

*hugs patat oorlog and decent laws*

 

[Lore]

Oh god, it's already past a senate committee? I thought that they were still just working on it; this might be bad.

And someone get Alt4 in here!

 

[Rubyiris]

Well there goes like... most of the internet lmao

 

[Mota]

I don't like this. The internet has to stay a free info medium for DEMOCRACY!

I heard a while back about an "Emergency internet shutdown button" or something, did that ever get implemented?

 

[AltF4]

A thorough description of the bill and what it does can be found from the Electronic Frontier Foundation here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/05/protect-ip-act-coica-redux

I don't think much else can be said about it except that it's a blatant tool of censorship under the guise of "protecting property" that doesn't exist in the first place. This will be used in attempts to silence dissidents of the United States.

Things like this are why the fight over Copyright is about much much more than how many millions of dollars Justin Beiber will make from recording deals this year. It's fundamentally a fight over the future of a Free and Open Internet. See my thread here:

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=214870