Congress wants to take away your internet.

[marie_j_granger]

Originally posted by dynamicsymmetry at Congress wants to take away your internet.

Folks, I know you're tired of me yelling at you, but you should be aware that there's a hearing this morning being held by the US House Judiciary Committee on a "copyright" bill that will essentially break the entire internet.

You like the internet, right? I mean, you're here.

From the link above:

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.

It gets worse: Under SOPA's provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”).

This is being framed as an attempt to fight hackers and pirates. Don't buy it. And don't think for a minute that it's going to stop there. This is bad. And at the hearing today, only one opponent of the bill is being allowed to testify.

Please do whatever you can to fight this. Email congresspeople. Sign petitions. Yell about it in every venue you can.

And/or

swiped from Bethy.  

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah, I was reading about this the other day. Horrifying innit. The extent to which it demonstrates that your elected representatives are fully in the pocket of special interest groups.

I'm not sure what can be done about it, it seems like a done deal, and by the time people realise what it's really about, it will be too late. All very worrying.

[marie-j-granger.livejournal.com]

Very horrid. It's awful.

Well, it's still in committee, so it might be derailed. I certainly hope so. I sent e-mail to my congressmen and senators, but if it comes close to a vote I'll actually call. I don't have high hopes for my representative or one senator (both Republicans), but the other Senator is a fairly liberal Democrat (not the same as your Lib Dems of course)and I hope she wouldn't vote for it. If I do call any or all of them I'll tell them frankly that if they vote for this bill I will not vote for them again. Period.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Did you hear when the Occupy Wall Street thing was trending on worldwide Twitter, somehow or other it amazingly wasn't trending at all within the USA. Which, makes it pretty clear that the government are controlling what trends just to make sure nothing takes off.

[marie-j-granger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's very very suspicious. I hadn't heard but I'm sadly not surprised.