Did my position on this issue evolve over the last 12 months? I am not ashamed to admit that it certainly did. The more I became educated on the realities of these issues, the more I came to the realization that a mandated technical solution just isn’t mutually compatible with the health of the Internet.
Really? ‘Nerds’? You know, actually, I think the word you’re looking for is ‘experts,’ to enlighten you so your laws won’t backfire and break the Internet.
JON STEWART, on members of Congress considering the SOPA and PIPA bills exasperatedly calling for “nerds” to help them understand SOPA and PIPA, on The Daily Show.
Why does Congress bother convening at all?
(via inothernews)
Right now Congress is considering two bills—the Protect IP Act, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—that would be laughable if they weren’t in fact real. Honestly, if a friend wrote these into a piece of fiction about government oversight gone amok, I’d have to tell them that they were too one-dimensional, too obviously anticonstitutional.
Make no mistake: These bills aren’t simply unconstitutional, they are anticonstitutional. They would allow for the wholesale elimination of entire websites, domain names, and chunks of the DNS (the underlying structure of the whole Internet), based on nothing more than the “good faith” assertion by a single party that the website is infringing on a copyright of the complainant. The accused doesn’t even have to be aware that the complaint has been made.
I’m not kidding.
PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet
Albert Wenger: Help Stop the Internet Censorship Bill
There is an awful bill making its way around congress. I first wrote about this when it was called COICA and was thankfully defeated due to opposition from Senator Ron Wyden. Then it returned as the PROTECT IP act or PIPA. Now we have the house version which is in part called, I kid you not, the E-PARASITE act (scroll to page 3 and you will find the name for Title I).
I won’t make an effort here to go into detail as to why this is a terrible idea. In addition to the previous posts that I have linked to, you can read Mike Masnick’s take over at Techdirt or the EFF’s.
So what should you do? Here are three steps that everyone should take today
1. Call and fax your representative’s office and tell them that you are against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act (that is the name of the entire bill).
2. Email your 10 best friends and ask them to do the same.
3. Buy and read Larry Lessig’s excellent new book Republic, Lost to understand how we wind up with such terrible legislation and what we can do about it.
I am off now to let my representative, Congresswoman Nita Lowey, know how I feel about SOPA and then send some emails. Please do the same!
#StopSOPA
