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Internet community locked out of SOPA hearings
THE WIDER INTERNET community is unable to participate in testimony to Congress about American plans to thwart 'piracy', according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups.
Hearings being held in the US about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, could result in a law that brings down a curtain on local internet services. Unfortunately the hearings, which include discussions of whether it is fair and right to ban people and web sites from the internet, are something of a closed shop, according to watchers.
Although the House Judiciary Committee streamed the proceedings, that was of poor quality and the hearings shut out everyone in opposition to the proposals, according to the EFF.
"Unfortunately, we were confronted with an incredibly poor webcast stream for much of the hearing," said the EFF in a statement. "We find it ironic and deeply concerning that Congress is unable to successfully stream video of an event this important to all Internet users, even as they are debating a dangerous plan to change the Internet in fundamental ways and deputize Internet intermediaries to act like content police."
This message was mirrored elsewhere and Loz Kaye, head of the UK Pirate Party also expressed his frustrations at the event. "Frankly @mpaa, you can't even make decent movies any more, let alone write policy. #SOPA #Newzbin," he tweeted as the hearing started.
Mozilla has added its weight to the campaign, and like other web sites gave its front page over to the campaign. "Protect the Internet," said a splash page on its web site, "Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation". Mozilla has also sent Congressional leaders a joint letter, together with AOL, Ebay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo! and Zynga, in opposition to the bill.
Avaaz, a global civil and civic rights organisation, claims that over 200,000 people have signed its petition to stop the bill, while the EFF has revealed that Tumblr is generating 3.6 calls per second to Congress in opposition. µ
Tags: Internet
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..make lemonade! Force folks underground, make them go back to using BBS bulletin boards, new tech like Blackberry messaging. Honestly folks, better not to strangle the information givers lest they are unable to give information. No censorship on internet. What's the point anyway? Where there's a will, there's a way, ne c'est pas?
Who are you people behind this totalitarian and unconstitutional law?
When a government proposes to take away from the citizenry rights that are guaranteed by the most basic law of the land, that government does not want educated advocates for the rights of the people mucking up the works by discussing the proposals openly and with logic.
All that matters is the bribes paid to the corrupt lawmakers by the special interest, to wit, the RIAA and MPAA. To quote the Roman Senate in Mel Brooks' _History of the World, Part 1_, "Fuck the people!"
Guy Fawkes had the right idea.
This is just further proof that the US government does NOT represent the people, but only financial interest of corporations and themselves.
Insider trading by senate shorting stock - betting against their own team (country) pulling a Pete Rose, but on a scale that hurt millions of people world wide.
I hear the US congress approval rating is lower than the US communist party (and they are more scared of communists than hitler was).
And that was before SOPA and such.