Stop SOPA / PIPA!

11 Days and Counting...

Major Opposition to SOPA PIPA
Major internet corporations are opposed to SOPA PIPA legislation set to pass in a 11 days, on Jan. 24, 2011. The major companies are: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla Firefox, Yahoo, AOL, Zynga Game Network, Linkedin Corp, and Ebay. The letter they wrote to the politicians who designed the two bills is below.

Major Opposition to SOPA PIPA includes WordPress, who urged its 60 million users world wide to fight the bill and declare their opposition to censoring the internet, as well as Reddit and other major internet establishments.

The Letter was addressed to the major sponsors and co-authors of SOPA and PIPA who are:
Patrick Leahy
Chuck Grassley
Lamar Smith
John Conyers

Major Opposition to SOPA PIPA A Letter to Congress:

” The undersigned Internet and technology companies write to express our concerns with legislative measures that have been introduced in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, S. 968 (The Protect IP Act”) and H.R. 3261 (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”).

“We support the bills’ stated goals– providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign “rogue” websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting”.

“Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites.

We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity. We cannot support these bills as written and ask that you consider more targeted ways to combat foreign rogue websites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting, while preserving the innovation and dynamism that has made the internet such an important driver of economic growth and job creation”.

The letter continues to point out the bills would seriously “undermine” the DMCA which is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 which protects the internet companies who act in good faith to remove infringements to copyright already.

A comment from Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google ” the solutions are draconian” “there’s a bill that would require internet service providers to remove URL’s from the Web, which is also known as censorship last time I checked”. Major Opposition to SOPA PIPA is growing by the day as the reading of the bill draws near more opposition grows from the public.

The Job of Policing Hollywood Belongs to Hollywood not the Whole World Wide Web

The main problem with these two bills is that it punishes the whole industry with the task of policing the internet, which will be duplicated at many stages.

Those who are promoting the bills in Hollywood

The different factions of internet access from a search engine, a hosting company, a website all will be policing the web which duplicates the efforts and wastes man hours of employee time. This duplication of efforts is in itself a redundant, waste and in the midst of a long stagnant economy of 10 years will be a huge hit on the economy. In terms of the work required to monitor millions of websites, it makes the bill a catastrophic loss of income both private and government taxpayers funds.

The bills would be censorship in its truest form, censorship of media, censorship of information, and censorship of a freedom as basic as human rights. The measures would also hoard the internet for larger corporation media and drown out the smaller independent businesses and will present a lopsided society.

The Damage to the US Economy

The notice to lawmakers points out the pitfalls in their bill, plus the damage the bill would do to the economy, to jobs, to small business es and to freedom of the press. If you look at this bill carefully, it will hardly stop piracy, but places an enormous economic burden on an already damaged economy.

To add SOPA FIPA to the only area where the US excels would be a disaster that politicians who do not understand the internet cannot comprehend.

The bill was badly written, giving government authority to order internet providers, search engines to shut down sites on one complaint, leaving room for abuse, monopolies by larger corporations and the task of policing the internet to every business involved.

The bills will not stop piracy experts say, which is caused by offshore agents, that will find new methods to bypass the overbearing restrictive bills.

The main players here are Hollywood movie firms, the music industry and video outlets that claim their property is being stolen by offshore pirates and this is the only way to stop them which is not true.

The Hollywood money in Congress given to the politicians who are putting forward this bill is a system of corruption itself, a system that is long overdue for reform. The internet represents millions of small businesses which will be put out of business, jobs will be lost and the economy will take a big hit again.

In addition, the bills would have US technology and jobs to move offshore to prevent the type of misplaced control of the internet.

Again, Congress displays its lack of intelligence and knowledge of how important the internet is to the future of America’s technological advances.

The recent declaration by Congress that pizza is a vegetable is proof enough.



Read more: Major Opposition to SOPA PIPA - Politicol News

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