background preloader

CONTRA

Facebook Twitter

Law Profs. Letter Against SOPA/PROTECT-IP. SOPA/PIPA Copyright Bills Also Target American Sites « Marvin Ammori. The tech and civil liberties communities have been fighting proposed copyright legislation. Critics have argued that the proposed legislation would break the Internet, create the Great Firewall of America, and lead to censorship while doing little to stop piracy itself. The bills are called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. The point of this post is more narrow than explaining all that is wrong with the bills. It responds to one particular argument: defenders of SOPA and PIPA keep saying that the legislation would not affect domestic sites.

They say that the bills only affect foreign infringing sites like The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload. Unfortunately, they’re wrong. First: The bills apply to the many American sites that have domestic and foreign domain names. Second: The bills’ anti-circumvention provisions don’t even pretend to limit the bills to foreign sites. Reddit. Wikipedia's homepage, just after midnight on Jan. 18, 2011 Wikipedia Having trouble using Wikipedia today? That's because the popular crowd-sourced online encyclopedia is participating in an "Internet blackout" in protest of two controversial anti-piracy bills: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Pictures: Websites go dark to protest SOPA The bills are intended to strengthen protections against copyright infringement and intellectual property theft, but Internet advocates say they would stifle expression on the World Wide Web.

In essence, the legislation has pitted content providers -- like the music and film industries -- against Silicon Valley. "It's not a battle of left versus right," said progressive activist Adam Green, whose organization Progressive Change Campaign Committee on Tuesday hosted a press conference with opponents of the bills. What's going on today? What does the legislation do? Why content providers want SOPA and PIPA. AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo!, Zynga.