Take Action against Internet Censorship
by Breese | January 18, 2012 at 12:41 PM
Protect the Internet - Help us stop Internet censorship legislation
Call to action from Mozilla
Today Mozilla joins with other sites in a virtual strike to protest two proposed laws in the United States, called SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act. On January 24th, the U.S. Senate will vote on the PROTECT IP Act to censor the Internet, despite opposition from the vast majority of Americans.
What’s this about?
Congress is trying to pass legislation that threatens free speech and innovation on the Internet, under the banner of anti-piracy efforts.
What’s at risk?
The proposed infrastructure would damage the security of the Internet and allow the government extensive censorship abilities.
How is it done?
The US will be able to block a site’s web traffic, ad traffic and search traffic using the same website censorship methods used by China, Iran and Syria.
What about piracy?
Piracy is a problem but there are better ways to address it that don’t stifle innovation, knowledge and creativity — or give the US such unchecked power over the global Internet.
From Access Now
This legislation will also seriously affect non-US websites and users as well. As we explain in the letter, this legislation, which targets foreign websites, would create a double jurisdiction problem, whereby non-U.S.-based sites must determine whether a site is legal in both the country it is operating in and the United States, or face losing access to payment providers, advertising, and links to their site. Moreover, this legislation would send an unequivocal message that censoring the web is not only acceptable, but encouraged.
The internet is a key enabler of human rights and innovation, and decisions over its governance should not be made hastily. With each passing day the claims for urgency for copyright legislation whither, from the demonstrably false data used to make economic arguments about losses and jobs, to the efficacy of DNS filtering, to the baseless claims that countries like Spain, Egypt, or Sweden have lost their film industries due to piracy.
Read the text of the proposed bils
- S. 968: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s112-968
- H.R.3261 -- Stop Online Piracy Act: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:
Join us to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity.
1. Sign the petition: http://www.mozilla.org/sopa/?WT.mc_id=strike
2. Join protests in:
New York City: http://nytm.org/sos/
San Francisco: http://www.meetup.com/sfnewtech/events/48489242/
Seattle: http://www.seattleagainstsopa.com/
And other cities: https://fightfortheftr.wordpress.com/
3. If you’re not in the US, join sites like Reddit, BoingBoing, Tumblr, Wikipedia, CREDO, WordPress, and countless other sites, and of course Access, in blacking out your site. Or talk about it on Twitter, Facebook, G+, make sure your friends know that the internet is going on strike tomorrow.
