Today is American Censorship Day, thanks to the Nazi-like efforts of certain tender-headed politicians to destroy net neutrality with the Stop Online Piracy Act [SOPA]. It's a bill that appears to be modeled after policies that have proven useful to the governments in such places as Syria, China, and Iran.
Please read what the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Google, Zynga, Twitter, and Facebook say about SOPA, call your representative, and demand the internet be free...
From the Massachusetts Pirate Party:
If passed, SOPA would create a variety of ways for corporations and the US government to censor the Internet. Like the Senate’s PROTECT-IP bill, SOPA would:
- make simply linking to an infringing website a crime;
- allow the US blacklist an infringing website without due process, by forcing third-parties to censor the website or stop doing business with the website;
- extend most of the tools the US has to private copyright holders;
- not penalize a private copyright holder if they blacklist a site in error;
- not penalize a payment provider if they ignore the counterclaim of a blacklisted website;
- the bill’s definition of what is infringing is very loose and will be abused.
SOPA goes farther than the PROTECT-IP bill and would also:
- criminalize streaming of copyrighted material, even if it was a kid singing a song on Youtube;
- criminalize tools that could be used to circumvent SOPA including VPNs and the TOR network;
- decrease the security of the domain name system every computer uses to look up host names.
We know we can win since a majority of Americans oppose the measures that SOPA would impose to prop up the failed business models of the large media corporations.
Please call your Representatives at the numbers listed below and urge them to oppose SOPA:
- 1st Congressional District - John Olver – (202) 225-5335 / (413) 532-7010
- 2nd Congressional District – Richard Neal – (202) 225-5601 / (413) 785-0325
- 3rd Congressional District – James McGovern – (202) 225-6101 / (508) 831-7356
- 4th Congressional District – Barney Frank – (202) 225-5931
- 5th Congressional District – Niki Tsongas – (202) 225-3411 / (978) 459-0101
- 6th Congressional District – Jonathan Tierney – (202) 225-8020 / (781) 595-7375
- 7th Congressional District – Ed Markey – (202) 225-2836 / (508) 875-2900
- 8th Congressional District – Michael Capuano – (202) 225-5111 / (617) 621-6208
- 9th Congressional District – Stephen Lynch – (202) 225-8273 / (617) 428-2000
- 10th Congressional District – William Keating – (202) 225-3111 / (617) 770-3700
To find out who your representative is, please visit Where Do I Vote MA and enter your address.
Please do it now.
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