SOPA and PIPA: TWIN TROUBLE

 

This Congress seems determined to declare war on free speech. All you will need is money to remove opinions that are disagreeable or unflattering.  While the rationale for the bill is correct, the cure is not. 

Looks like Congress has declared war on the internet — “Tech News and Analysis http://bit.ly/vh0lzS the Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced in the House this week, would give governments and private corporations unprecedented powers to remove websites from the internet on the flimsiest of grounds, and would force internet service providers to play the role of copyright police.” .

House Copyright Bill Casts Dangerously Broad Net | Center for Democracy & Technology http://bit.ly/u8qNip

"Yesterday, key members of the House Judiciary Committee introduced a bill (H.R. 3261, the "Stop Online Piracy Act") that not only repeats that mistake, but dangerously extends the scope. Gone is any serious effort to narrowly target clear "bad actors" and to craft legislation that seeks to root out the "worst of the worst" — a phrase we have often heard from proponents of such legislation.  In its place is a bill that appears to impose sweeping new risks and responsibilities on websites offering legitimate online services and to give rights holders a powerful new club to wield against any online service they believe isn’t doing enough to police infringement.

Don’t Let Hollywood Break the Internet With the PROTECT IP Act! – Forbes http://onforb.es/rw3uBy

It’s the cure that is the problem. The PROTECT IP Act would allow copyright owners – movie studios and other content providers – simply to accuse a website of infringement, which could lead to that site being shut down by court order and entire links to the site being wiped clean from the Internet.  Any website with a hyperlink, such as Twitter, Facebook or a blog, would be subject to liability. More, non-infringing sites could be inadvertently shut down under the proposal. Indeed, the law is so far-reaching that it would force Internet providers like Comcast to block all access to the allegedly illegal site.

The potential for abuse by the notoriously litigious content industry is clear. Last year, when the government sought to shut down one child pornography site, it ended up affecting some 70,000 legitimate sites for several days, even notifying visitors that the sites – many of which were business sites – were purveyors of child pornography.