Oppose Internet Censorship: Help Defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

I wanted to share a bill that is making its way through Congress and encourage ELI members to help defeat it. This is something all ELI members can relate to. But it give the companies even MORE power. They can basically block or erase your site from the internet based on the accusation of a copyright holder.  Check out the infographic on this page:
http://mashable.com/2011/11/16/sopa-infographic/

Internet censorship legislation is barreling through Congress, and could come up for a vote in the next couple of weeks. 

The Stop Online Piracy Act would ruin so much of what's best about the Internet: It will give the government and corporations new powers to block Americans' access to sites that are accused of copyright infringement, force sites like YouTube to go to new lengths to police users' contributions, and put people in prison for streaming certain content online.

Please visit http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/pipa_sopa to learn more. BEG your congressman to vote against SOPA.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Thanx for sharing MCF!

If this law passes, you'll wake up to find sites you love blocked by the US government. Tell Congress to vote "no" on SOPA.

http://americancensorship.org/

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Heres yet another great link to stop the censorship

http://stopcensorship.org/

[SoylentGreen]

"Corporations" have enough power as it is.
All we need is powerful companies dictating what can be transmitted electronically under the guise of "copyright infringement".

S.G.

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

Government too. This essentially gives the government a "kill switch" to censor content they don't appreciate; just like in China and Iran.

[Mulligan]

I personally think signing petitions and writing letters to politicians is a total waste of time since the politicians are so closely tied in with the business interests and lobbyists who keep them in office.

It seems to me that our time is much better spent publicizing via forums and blogs and emails what the settlement demand snakes are trying to do and how websites like ELI provide information and tools individuals can then use to successfully fight and defeat those who pervert outdated copyright laws to try to extort money from small designers, bloggers, and website owners.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

I tend to agree, however the more we collectively share to outside sources, not only do we ghet more exposure, we also enhance the chances of our plight being picked up by more streamlined and reputable news outlets..that will give us more leverage as a whole.

[Bekka]

The lastest on SOPA!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120108/00533117331/study-confirms-news-networks-owned-sopa-supporters-are-ignoring-sopapipa.shtml

I am hoping since Nancy Pelosi has come out against it, there may be a chance this bill will die or be defeated.

[Katerina]

This bill caused a lot of protests, and I read in a newspaper today that it loses its support from lawmakers. Wikipedia didn't work for about 24 hours, Google had a black bar on "GOOGLE" letters, Craigslist was all black and just was flashing about PIPA and SOPA. It all came to public attention. So, hopefully, this bill will not go through. Otherwise, this will be a nightmare.

[Mulligan]

Unless millions of Internet users continue to tie up the politicians' phone lines, email boxes, and postal boxes with vigorous complaints, you can be sure the big companies who profit so much on the out-dated copyright laws will return again and again to our "lawmakers" with SOPA and PIPA clones until they get what they want.

Here's a link to a story that shows what could happen to all webmasters (as well as innocent users taking advantage of cloud storage) at any time if anything like SOPA or PIPA ever gets passed:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-19/megaupload-feds-shutdown/52678528/1