Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Stop SOPA

It turns out that a coalition of internet privacy organizations are observing "American Censorship Day", attempting to mobilize opposition to the so-called "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA), H.R. 3261 and its Senate variant. The same people who brought you the DMCA have united against the rest of us. Congress held hearings on the bill last week.

Fortunately, the bill has attracted some powerful opponents, including Google.

From the website:

The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn't be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll be blunt here and say that I am surprised this is an issue that interests you. What is the source of your opposition to SOPA?

Dr. Φ said...

Well . . . a full explanation of how I arrived here would require a separate post. But the simplest explanation for now is that this amounts to expanded government/corporate control of communication and technology, and of that I disapprove.