Keeping an internet, redux
Hi! About a month ago, I posted about H. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act. I don't feel like rewriting it, but you can go read it again. Because it's coming up for a vote TOMORROW, THURSDAY DECEMBER 15, and it is completely and utterly liable to pass. Please contact your representative about it, even if you've done so before. I called Ed Markey, sometime champion of consumer's rights on the internet, earlier this week and his staffer disavowed any knowledge of his having a position on it. That kind of sucks.
Again, this is the bill that would allow copyright holders, or alleged copyright holders, to have a website taken down. Such seizures could eventually get ruled on by a judge under the new version, but seizures of domains under current law can take a year to resolve, with the site owners having zero ability to speak in their defense or know what the complaint precisely is. I don't see this getting any better when alleged rights holders can have a site blacklisted with no actual evidence overnight. It would kill any site with user uploaded content, from livejournal to regretsy to ravelry. And it would make use or development of VPN and proxy software that could be used to circumvent a SOPA ban illegal, which I just slightly care about, as well as make software to render text accessible to visually- or print-disabled readers.
Here are some recent EFF posts on SOPA being lousy according to actual law professors and the MPAA being full of it, the revised version continuing to be lousy, and SOPA's effect on educators, students, and librarians.
If you don't feel like reading a lot of links, just trust that I'm not making it up and call your rep. Please?
In the Senate, S.968 (Protect-IP) and S.978 (Commercial Felony Streaming Act, the one that sends you to jail for posting a karaoke video -- oh hey, SOPA makes that illegal too) are not scheduled for a vote currently. It wouldn't hurt to send your senators a bit of no-love for them while you're at it, though.
Again, this is the bill that would allow copyright holders, or alleged copyright holders, to have a website taken down. Such seizures could eventually get ruled on by a judge under the new version, but seizures of domains under current law can take a year to resolve, with the site owners having zero ability to speak in their defense or know what the complaint precisely is. I don't see this getting any better when alleged rights holders can have a site blacklisted with no actual evidence overnight. It would kill any site with user uploaded content, from livejournal to regretsy to ravelry. And it would make use or development of VPN and proxy software that could be used to circumvent a SOPA ban illegal, which I just slightly care about, as well as make software to render text accessible to visually- or print-disabled readers.
Here are some recent EFF posts on SOPA being lousy according to actual law professors and the MPAA being full of it, the revised version continuing to be lousy, and SOPA's effect on educators, students, and librarians.
If you don't feel like reading a lot of links, just trust that I'm not making it up and call your rep. Please?
In the Senate, S.968 (Protect-IP) and S.978 (Commercial Felony Streaming Act, the one that sends you to jail for posting a karaoke video -- oh hey, SOPA makes that illegal too) are not scheduled for a vote currently. It wouldn't hurt to send your senators a bit of no-love for them while you're at it, though.