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SITES UNITE TO STOP SOPA

Sites like Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, and Reddit have gone black this morning in protest of The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which threatens Internet independence and free speech as well as a host of other rights. We have long discussed the ever-widening array of criminal and civil penalties pushed through Congress by the powerful radio and television lobby as well as other industry groups. The Obama Administration has been particularly willing to carry the water for these groups over objections from public interest groups. SOPA reflects the power of this lobby and its hold over members of Congress and the Obama Administration. While the Obama Administration has now responded to the outcry by insisting that it will tweak the bill, such promises ring hallow given its past efforts to appease this industry and its dishonest statements recently in other areas like the indefinite detention controversy. Notably, the recent admission from the White House that it has some concerns over the bill did not come until the public rallied against the bill — another indication of the control of an industry group in the drafting of legislation. This lobby is not going to go quietly into the night. It is more likely that it will work with the White House and Congress to achieve the same purposes with an incremental series of laws — if it does not simply win outright.

The radio and movie industry has shown zero concern over free speech and other rights in seeking to protect profits. The bill has sweeping implications in the loss of safe harbor provisions and the right to bar Internet sites under vague provisions. Wikipedia, which has taking a lead in fighting this bill, has a good discussion of these dangers. Not only must this bill be defeated, but advocates should force a review of the current draconian and often abused copyright and trademark laws.

The standard approach of lobbyists when faced with public opposition is to pull back while working privately with the White House and Congress to achieve the same results once the fervor has died down. In the meantime, most of the Hollywood stars and recording artists who claim to support the arts and free speech are conspicuously silent as their lobbyists seek strip the Internet of protections. Just as we saw with the pharmaceutical industry, the entertainment industry has given jobs to congressional staffers who have worked for its interests in Congress. Various sites have documented the millions given to Congress by the industry to pass this law.

Sites like Rawstory have links to contact your representatives. I encourage everyone to join this worthy effort. The Internet is the single most important advance in free speech in a century, if not in the history of humanity. While this industry cannot see beyond its profits, the public needs to protect this resource for creative and political expression.

86 thoughts on “SITES UNITE TO STOP SOPA”

  1. Here’s a ProPublica link that I had posted before:

    SOPA Opera
    Where Do Your Members of Congress Stand on SOPA and PIPA?
    http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/

    Excerpt;
    By Dan Nguyen, ProPublica. Updated Jan. 18, 2012

    Well-funded interests on either side of SOPA and PIPA are lining up support among members of Congress. This database keeps track of where members of Congress stand. Findings are based on two factors: whether a member is a sponsor of the proposed bills, and each member’s voting record on the current bills’ precursors and alternatives.

  4. AN,

    You are one bright Nurse…..If all people could care as much…..You and Elaine readily put the extra efforts in to bringing life to what they past with the links attached….Thank you….

    Does this not make Dodd look like a sellout….The way I had heard it yesterday it was Silicon Valley vs Hollywood….They both have vested interests in the outcome of the bill….From Dodd’s perspective it would put many a blue collar workers out of business…..Yeah, like Disney pays the people much to copy them….People need to start reading label origins…

    Then to pit this topic against another of things made in the USA vs Somewhere else….There was an experiment that I read about and folks liked the ideal of Made in the USA…..but there was a point of preferring the USA products and the price of the made Somewhere else….

    I think the Bill is seriously flawed for many reasons….and these are just a few…

  5. I’ve signed numerous petitions regarding this. Today’s actions are mostly symbolic, yet meant to remind Congress that Internet Freedom affects many ow important Internet based corporations and they do have the power to control and black out many services on which we all have become dependent. In may ways this is a battle of corporate interests, where unfortunately we the people ad our freedom of information is at stake.

  6. Elaine,

    Thanks for confirming… I was as certain as I could be that I had posted my comment earlier… I left my computer for a bit and when I came back, my original comment (the salon/Greenwald one) was gone, so I simply reported it.

  9. Onlooker, one does not deploy the entire armament in the first engagement. One keeps one’s capabilities deliberately weak, but only in appearance. If google actually went dark, for even an hour, hundreds of millions of dollars would be lost. Maybe even a billion per hour these days moves through google’s networks. And most of those losses would be inflicted on those unrelated in any way to politics, and may be life/death mission critial. So google has to move with intelligence.

    Any politician who thinks they can take on google, well, good luck with that. And they are but one Titan. And be rest assured: they are already several technologies down the road from SOPA/PIPA having any meaningful effect. A few public arrests using old technology is the perfect smoke screen. It always has and always will.

    As soon a Congress fills with network engineers, this may change….

  10. anon nurse,

    Well we all know, if their lips are moving…

    Dodd – just another in a long line of hypocritical, unscrupulous liars.

  11. The comment of Onlooker above: chicken shit– is Right On! Google and smoogle and the others will survive. They will be more insulated from competition. This Lamar Smith guy from Texas is suspicious.

  12. http://www.salon.com/2012/01/18/chris_dodds_paid_sopa_crusading/singleton/

    WASHINGTON — Sen. Chris Dodd says he still doesn’t know what he’ll do come January 2011, when, for the first time in 36 years, he will no longer be a member of Congress. But he has ruled out one option.

    “No lobbying, no lobbying,” Dodd said in a recent interview. That Dodd would forgo a trip through Washington’s “revolving door,” using his policy and political expertise–and a thick Rolodex–to launch a new career in the influence industry, may come as a surprise.

    Hollywood’s chief lobbyist lashed out at tech companies for mounting Tuesday night’s planned online blackout to protest proposed anti-piracy legislation that has pitted Southern California movie and music distributors against Silicon Valley Internet corporations.

    Motion Picture Assn. of America Chief Executive Chris Dodd, the former Senator from Connecticut, accused technology companies such as Google, Mozilla and Wikipedia of resorting to stunts. . . . (and the article continues)

  13. Require your Senators in your state and Congresspeople to take a position. Vote against them if they vote for SOAPA.

  14. Well, Google’s “go dark” is symbolic only. They’ve blacked out their name on their home page but you can still do a search normally. Seems like they wanted to be perceived to be participating without actually doing it. Kinda chicken shit.

  16. The SOPA is another corporation led attempt to throttle the internet and to achieve more corporate profits from it, while restricting the free speech that is exercised every day on it.

  17. Carol, Al Franken supports PIPA and Bachmann is against SOPA. I still would vote for Franken and not Bachmann. lol I think something will eventually pass but it won’t be Texas republican Lamar Smith’s SOPA which is a horrendous bill.

  19. http://voteforthenet.com/ a petition
    Vote for the Net “In 2012,
    I will only support candidates who stand for Internet freedom and who oppose the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA. I will work against any candidate, of any party, who votes to censor and stifle the Internet.”

  20. It is unwise to pick a fight with the people who actually run the Internet. This is a warning shot, as “going dark” is the least of the weapons available. Woe betide politicians who are still stuck in the Age of Paper. Your doom hangs by a thread, and your beliefs are irrelevant. The death of your idea is at hand.

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