House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa has announced a January 18th hearing in the US Congress on the potential impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on the Internet.
Issa, a harsh critic of SOPA, has invited some top experts in cybersecurity to next week's hearing to discuss the downside of proposed legislation such as SOPA. Issa does not support drastic measures in currently proposed legislation like having internet service providers block domains through the Domain Name System or requiring search engines and other websites to block access to foreign websites deemed dedicated to copyright infringement.
Reddit co-founder on witness list promises black out in protest of SOPA
Next week's hearing will include testimony from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. In protest of SOPA the Reddit website will be blacked out on January 18th from 8 am to 8 pm Eastern time.
On their blog the reddit team announced the blackout: "Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action. "
Reddit is a popular social news website where the registered users submit content, and other users then vote the submission "up" or "down."
PIPA is the acronym for the Senate version of the bill more formally known as the Protect IP Act, which suggests blocking of sites deemed as internet pirates be blocked by using the internet's Domain Name Service to prevent access to websites. The house version of the bill, SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, would have search engine blocking sites on the Internet if the government considered them in violation of copyright laws.
Over the last several weeks we have been covering the battle for the right to keep the internet free and open, We will be following the fight for intenet freedom in the weeks ahead.
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If you missed any of the recent news on the issues of controlling online piracy, please check out the links below or click on this link to a comprehensive list of internet legislation articles.
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