Protest for Free Speech — Kill PIPA and SOPA

In an act of solidarity against over regulation WordPress, Wikipedia, Tucows and many other Internet Giants have either gone dark or otherwise expressed concern over SOPA and PIPA today.

WordPress Takes Stance on PIPA and SOPAWikipedia Protests PIPA and SOPA
Tucows Takes Stance on PIPA and SOPA

So what’s All The Fuss About PIPA & SOPA?

SOPA “Stop Online Piracy Act”

PIPA “the Protect IP Act”

  • The U.S. Attorney General can now seek a court order that would force search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, servers, and payment processors from having any contact with allegedly infringing websites
  • It will allow private corporations to create their own personal hit lists composed of websites they feel are breaking their copyright policies, ironically this doesn’t have any odd feelings of a legal mafia at all. These companies will be able to directly contact a website’s payment processors a notice to cut all off payment involvement with the targeted website. This payment processors and website of question will then have five days to act before it is simply taken down.
  • Payment processors will have the power to cut off any website they work with, as long as they can provide a strong reason of why they believe this site is violating copyrights
  • Force U.S. internet providers to block access to websites deemed as enablers of copyright infringement
  • Seek legal action by suing search engines, blog sites, directories, or any site in general to have the black listed sites removed from their website
  • Will be able to force advertising services on infringing websites, and those supporting of them, to remove them from their advertising accounts
  • Companies will also have the power to sue any new websites that get started after this bill is passed, if they believe that they are not doing a good job of preventing infringement on your website

These laws would go well beyond the noble intent of protecting copyrighted content; due to the draconian nature of these bills, if made law, they would enable a business to shut down a competitor or Politicians to silence opposition over minor copyright infringements even if they were accidental.

So if you value free speech and an Internet that can’t be shut down or censored by the government, take action.

Visit WordPressWikipedia or Tucows and learn how to let your Congressmen know that you don’t support PIPA or SOPA!

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