The End of The Internet? lolwut?

[Kirby]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-segal/...i_b_739836.html

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Huffington Post
When it really matters to them, Congressmembers can come together -- with a panache and wry wit you didn't know they had. As banned books week gets underway, and President Obama admonishes oppressive regimes for their censorship of the Internet, a group of powerful Senators -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have signed onto a bill that would vastly expand the government's power to censor the Internet.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced just one week ago, but it's greased and ready to move, with a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee this Thursday. If people don't speak out, US citizens could soon find themselves joining Iranians and Chinese in being blocked from accessing broad chunks of the public Internet.

Help us stop this bill in its tracks! Click here to sign the petition.

COICA creates two blacklists of Internet domain names. Courts could add sites to the first list; the Attorney General would have control over the second. Internet service providers and others (everyone from Comcast to PayPal to Google AdSense) would be required to block any domains on the first list. They would also receive immunity (and presumably the good favor of the government) if they block domains on the second list.

The lists are for sites "dedicated to infringing activity," but that's defined very broadly -- any domain name where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are "central to the activity of the Internet site" could be blocked.

One example of what this means in practice: sites like YouTube could be censored in the US. Copyright holders like Viacom often argue copyrighted material is central to the activity of YouTube, but under current US law, YouTube is perfectly legal as long as they take down copyrighted material when they're informed about it -- which is why Viacom lost to YouTube in court.

But if COICA passes, Viacom wouldn't even need to prove YouTube is doing anything illegal to get it shut down -- as long as they can persuade the courts that enough other people are using it for copyright infringement, the whole site could be censored.

Perhaps even more disturbing: Even if Viacom couldn't get a court to compel censorship of a YouTube or a similar site, the DOJ could put it on the second blacklist and encourage ISPs to block it even without a court order. (ISPs have ample reason to abide the will of the powerful DOJ, even if the law doesn't formally require them to do so.)

COICA's passage would be a tremendous blow to free speech on the Internet -- and likely a first step towards much broader online censorship. Please help us fight back: The first step is signing our petition. We'll give you the tools to share it with your friends and call your Senator.
TL;DR -- In the United States, a new law proposal called The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced last week, and there will be a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee this Thursday.

If passed, this law will allow the government, under the command of the media companies, to censor the internet as they see fit, like China and Iran do, with the difference that the sites they decide to censor will be completely removed from the internet and not just in the US.

It should be noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed the scheduled markup of the Internet censorship bill — a fantastic outcome, given that the entertainment industry and their allies in Congress had hoped this bill would be quickly approved before the Senators went home for the October recess.

So yeah, this is really, really, bad. If this thing gets passed, this isn't just the US this will happen to, this is the entire world having their internet censored by any big corporation that wants to. What scares me the most is that I'm thinking if this actually does pass, people are just going to be too generally lazy to care, even if that means losing even more of our rights.

The petition is here. You may want to see about sending $3 to help get a guy to DC to fight this bill, too. Even if you don't, though, the biggest thing you could possibly do to help is spread the word and gather people who don't want their rights taken away by a bunch of corporate fat cats. Honestly, what I think scares me most about this bill isn't the censorship we'll get if it passes, but the fact that a ton of people are probably not going to complain at all if it does. I mean, if the government manages to take this away, what else could they get away with?

[Hakudamashi]

And America wonders why the rest of the world hates their guts?
Just when you thought "Well,accepting gays was the last stupid thing they could do"...

[TobiTheGoodGirl]

No way in hell would that bill ever be passed, we the people hold the power in the US government and with all the gamers and computer and website designers hell will be raised.
So, don't worry about it.

[Hakudamashi]

Why did they think this was even a "half-assesd" plan to begin with?

[Jazz Nova]

This is against the Constitution.
It violates freedom of speech and freedom of press
(

[Hakudamashi]

This is against the Constitution.
It violates freedom of speech and freedom of press
(

It violates "freedom" in general...
On the internet anyway

[chet]

woahhhhh what is this bullshit? what happened to the first amendment?

[1pokemonhacker]

the internets shall live on