Fight Against SOPA – Stop American Censorship

Congress is about to pass internet censorship, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity.
StopAmericanCensorship.org

Nobody likes censorship. But now it may be coming to the United States. On Tuesday, January 24th, the United States Senate will vote on the internet censorship bill. And at this point, it’s looking as if it will pass.

If passed, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will force search engines to remove certain sites, will require internet service provides to block access to cetain websites, and will make unauthorised streaming of copyrighted content a crime. The bill is supposedly intended to protect the intellectual property market, but in reality it does much more than that.

This bill is harmful to websites that rely on user-generated content. If the bill passes, Etsy, Vimeo and Flickr will likely have to shut down. Why? Because they are based on user-generated content. Currently, these websites all comply with DMCA’s safe harbour requirements and remove content that infringes on copyright when they get a complaint. With this safe harbour policy, the site is not responsible for the content that its users submit, unless it is aware that it is hosting content that infringes on copyright and allows it to remain. But if the bill passes, the SOPA will override the safe harbour for websites and allow judges to immediately block access to these websites. The problem is that this bill can target an entire website, even if only one piece of user-submitted content infringes on copyright. Why do we want to punish an entire website for the actions of one individual?

This bill will do much more harm than good. It will censor the internet, limit free speech, and harm sites that rely on user-submitted content. These are all the cons, what about the pros? Will this bill actually protect against copyright infringement? Hardly. If a pirating website gets blocked, it will only reappear hours later under a new domain name. That already happens and it will continue to happen even if this bill is passed.

For more information, watch the below video:

Or just want a quick example of the terrors to come? Here is an excerpt from the above video:

Now allow me to give you a real world – this is not a speculative example, this is a real world example that happened just a few days back. So Universal Music has been getting up in a tizzy about MegaUpload. MegaUpload they brand as a piracy site. On the 29th of November [2011] MegaUpload was unavailable across many countries including the US because of a DNS takedown request and it was branded as a “rogue site.” The law enforcement authorities got involved in this. So that, if anything, is a bit of an impression of what’s to come. However, it doesn’t end there because this is the thing about this bill – it’s not just about taking down “rogue sites,” it has far more dangerous implications.

So in support of MegaUpload, a bunch of artists including P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, produced a song in support of MegaUpload in order to try to raise awareness into what was going on. YouTube was forced to take the song down when they received a takedown notice from Universal Media group, claiming it violated their copyrights. Now the scary thing is, it didn’t. It didn’t violate their copyrights in any way, shape or form. They did not own any of the content in that video, and yet they blocked it anyway.

This is an example of obvious corporate censorship. Trying to censor the vide because it raises awareness of an issue that they don’t want people to get all activist about. Why? Because they prefer that people just sit back and be apathetic about this kind of thing while they take away your rights one at a time.

The scariest thing? Apparently they didn’t even need the rights in order to take it down. They didn’t need to have a legitimate copyright infringement claim. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in order to remove this video they claimed that in some time in 2009 they made an agreement with YouTube, which allowed them to take down stuff they didn’t have the right to. That should scare the hell out of you!

WTF is SOPA? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet

So how can we stop this?

Visit Stop American Censorship to learn about how you can write an e-mail to congress, petition the state department, and more. The Senate will vote on Tuesday, January 24th so act now!

Sources & More Reading

• SOPA Infographic
• Stop Online Piracy Act
• What’s On the Blacklist? Three Sites That SOPA Could Put at Risk
• WTF is SOPA? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet
• The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas
• House takes Senate’s bad Internet censorship bill, tries making it worse