On January 18, the Senate is scheduled to continue hearings on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that would enable federal law enforcement agencies to shut down foreign Web sites and services that that use pirated content created by U.S. firms such as music and movies, as well as counterfeit pharmaceuticals from overseas pharmacies. Supporters of the bill state that the bi-partisan bill would protect the American advantage in the online marketplace by penalizing those who host, link to, and provide e-commerce around the illegal content. Major companies that do business primarily or entirely on the Internet, as well as free-speech activists and online privacy groups, however, say that its provisions will promote Internet censorship and erode First Amendment and free speech rights. You can find a summary of the bill at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@D&summ2=m&.
When the bill was introduced in October, domain registration company GoDaddy.com supported it and found themselves embroiled in a boycott by users of Reddit. As a result, many customers began to transfer their domains to GoDaddy competitors and subsequently the company rethought its position and reversed their initial stance, saying that they would offer support "...when and if the Internet community supports it."
One of the largest companies to initiate a transfer of its domains was the massive Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. In addition, Wikipedia polled its users about the possibility of a service interruption or blackout and found that over 85% of them supported that action. On January 3, ExtremeTech reported that some of the Internet's largest companies, including Google, AOL, eBay, Yahoo!, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and LinkedIn, were also considering a one-day blackout on the day before the hearings begin, referred to as the "nuclear option."
Hearings began in December, but were halted when it became evident that there was little input from those most-affected by the law's passage. At the hearings that will be held on the 18th of January, the Senate will hear testimony from Internet technology experts.
Personally I support efforts to control access to illegal Internet content If SOPA is enacted in its present form; I think Internet commerce and our First Amendment rights will suffer a severe setback. Putting the ability to block ecommerce in the hands of the copyright holders, who are already finding loopholes that will allow them to not only remove illegal content, but content they don't like, will cause untold damage to the security measures now in place. SOPA will make it legal to block legal content. I'll be watching and paying attention to the hearings, will you?
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