Say No to SOPA/PROTECT-IP

H.R. 3261 (Stop Online Piracy Act) and S. 968 (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) are absolutely bad for online freedom. I normal restrain my political postings to my other blog, but I believe that this is important and relevant to the target audience of this website enough so that I believe that I should post something here, too.

Under these proposed laws, rights-holders would be able to shut down access to a website by merely alleging that the website contains or helps locate stuff that they own the rights to, even if the allegedly infringing content is posted by third parties. This would effectively shut down forums, bulletin boards, IRC servers, news aggregators, and sites that you use every day like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

And that's just where it starts. If a website is "capable of" or "seems to encourage" copyright infringement, it can be blocked at the request of the copyright holder alleging the offense. It wouldn't be a stretch for any competent lawyer to argue that my post about the recent Chanel case in United States District Court in Nevada "seems to encourage" copyright infringement by way of stating my opinion that such decision is putting us on a slippery slope. It wouldn't be a stretch for any competent lawyer to argue that your website is "capable of" copyright infringement by merely having a means for user-generated content such as having a commenting system turned on.

What these proposed laws effectively do is erect a Great Content Filter of the United States of America, with Hollywood, media firms, and others with deep pockets getting to choose what you get to see on the Internet.

And no, this is not a "partisan" effort in Congress to pass what ultimately amounts to destroying free speech on the Internet in the United States. These bills have the support of both major parties. This issue really is an issue of the People versus the Republican/Democrat tag-team.

I strongly encourage you to contact your Representatives and Senators and let them know that a vote for SOPA or PROTECT-IP is a vote to destroy part of the essential fabric of this great nation. Some of them might actually still represent your best interests.