What’s at stake and why should I care?
Rebecca MacKinnon’s recent editorial
in the New York Timessays it well:
“Compliance with the Stop Online Piracy Act would require
huge overhead spending by Internet companies for staff and technologies
dedicated to monitoring users and censoring any infringing material from being
posted or transmitted. This in turn would create daunting financial burdens and
legal risks for start-up companies, making it much harder for brilliant young
entrepreneurs with limited resources to create small and innovative Internet
companies that empower citizens and change the world.”
- Flaws and consequences include, but are not limited to:
- Compromising the DMCA
safe harbors for online intermediaries
- Giving the government
authority to block domains without due process
- Interfering with linking
and search engines and the DNS, while not
actually being effective
- Making uploading
copyrighted content a felony, punishable by 5 years in prison
- Threatening jobs, innovation,
speech, cybersecurity
- Undermining the U.S.’s
ability to discourage repressive regimes abroad from censoring citizens
What can I do as an individual and as a company or
organization?
Encourage all Internet users to contact their Representatives as
soon as possible to voice their strong discontent with the bill. It
is slated for markup
this Thursday December 15, so concerns should ideally be voiced before
Thursday. You can call and email your House Representative by
visiting FightForTheFuture.org.
They have a great web tool where you enter your zip code, are given talking
points, and then are directly connected to your Representative. There are
other useful tools on AmericanCensorship.org
for websites to “censor” their sites and logos, to demonstrate the potential
effects of this bill. You can also send people to IWorkforTheInternet.org to post
pictures of themselves to show that the Internet has created jobs, and
these jobs are threatened by this bill. You can share this post
with any people or organizations and encourage them to act and spread the word
as well!
What else should I know?
This is not the only option; there’s an alternative bill
proposed entitled The OPEN Act.
More info is available at www.KeeptheWebOpen.com.
Also, the first round of anti-censorship advocacy was very successful, and
generated millions of emails and thousands of calls, as this infographic
shows. If you participated in that, participate again; if you didn’t
participate, now’s the time. Come on “geek
lobby,” #Don'tBreaktheInternet!
