We rarely get involved or have a voice in politics, however we are
making a exception in this case as the bills listed below could (and
likely will) ruin the internet as we know it.
The SOPA
or Stop Internet Piracy is a bill currently in the USA Congress that
would require ISP's to remove TOTAL access to a site via DNS if they
were even accused of having something illegal on their site. While the
DMCA can requires take down of suspected illegal content this removes
the entire site.
In other words lets say someone
filed a complaint against Google.com or Secondlife.com, the internet
providers would be forced to remove their DNS listings meaning that if
you typed in Google.com or Secondlife.com nothing would come up (you
would most likely get a 404 error). No investigation is needed. It is
guilty until proven innocent. It would also force all providers to be
police. Most companies that carry user generated content (youtube,
second life, forums etc) do not have the manpower (or cannot afford) to
police/find every little thing on their site and therefore would likely
go out of business rather than try to continue. And another bill called
Protect IP Act is just as bad.
These
bills if enacted/made law will destroy the internet as we know it in
the USA and will likely affect the rest of the world in a large way.
This bill must be stopped. If you are in the USA call your congressman
and representatives and tell them you DO NOT want these bills and for
them to vote unanimously NO. Check out the Electronic Frontier
Foundation for information on how to do this
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173
and do so as soon as possible as much as possible. This is scheduled
to come up for vote on January 24th. Please note phone calls carry much
more weight than email or letters. If you are in the USA it is best if
you call as soon as possible as much as possible, lets overrun their
phone lines and let our voices be heard against this threat to the
internet as we know it.
Other related links:
http://americancensorship.org/
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/01/eff-says-sopa-threatens-second-life.html
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/
UPDATE: While they have been "shelved" or "Tabled" they are not dead and could return at any moment. Sadly we still need to be vigilant.
