Wiki Shrugs — The ever-useful Wikipedia along with several other websites are pulling themselves off the net today, Jan. 18, to protest two extremely stupid and intrusive laws being debated in Congress.
The laws are the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).
Why are these laws bad? They would give a copyright holder the power to cut off all American access to any foreign Web site by merely accusing it of violating his copyright.
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor noted that
“an entire Web site containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement.”
Tribe also states that SOPA would violate the First Amendment because “it delegates to a private party the power to suppress speech without prior notice and a judicial hearing. This provision of the bill would give complaining parties the power to stop online advertisers and credit card processors from doing business with a website, merely by filing a unilateral notice accusing the site of being ‘dedicated to theft of U.S. property’- -even if no court has actually found any infringement.”
Wiki has left a page on which you can contact your servants in Washington, albeit Pat Meehan’s link did not seem to be working.
Here’s what I sent to senators Toomey and Casey:
Sen. Toomey
Trying to protect Hollywood and the music industry is like trying to protect horse buggy makers.
It’s not like I have anything against horse buggy makers — I mean it’s not like they ever tried to undermine the national social fabric or anything — but protecting them would have given us an automobile industry on par with a place like Turkey or Saudi Arabia, and certainly made our transportation system far less egalitarian. I’m sure the Gore family would have access to automobiles albeit I’m not so sure about mine.
You know the reasons not to vote for these bills. If not, you can find it on Wikipedia as they still have left that page up.
The internet is working fine. Let whatever is going to happen to Hollywood, happen to Hollywood.
(I added the Bush family in the one to Casey)
Wiki Shrugs — Off The Net Jan. 18 2012