Some people know it as 'The Internet Blacklist'. Sites like Demand Progress have been following its movement through the judicial system since it was first released to the public. But each time it's shut down, congress pulls it back to the forefront. Now some people think the bill is only designed to stop piracy, torrenting of movies and music.
However, it will cause a far deeper impact.
In short, sites like facebook, livejournal and twitter will require the owner to police their user base or shut down. Search engines and start up companies, people who make money off of hits and add revenue will be forced to close before they even begin. Your ISP's will be firewalling anything and everything that they remotely think is infringing, even if its not. This means that before you even get an email, that email has already been read by someone else, and the links that you could have used to research a school project or get info on a company you where interested in applying to will have been removed. It will become illegal to post a video of a family barbeque simply because your cousin sang karaoke of Katy Perry. The guy who does cover songs and mashups on youtube for fun? He's going to be sued.
People who make a living off of doing game walk throughs and reviews, like TotalBuscuit, The Escapist, Jessie Cox and The Yogscast will be shut down and lose income. Independent film companies like Dead Gentlemen Productions, creators of movies like 'The Gamers' and 'The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising' will be shut down for good.Blog sites, personal sites, art sites like FurAffinity, Deviantart and others will be shut down due to what might be seen as infringing media.
Game sites like Furcadia, forum roleplays, MMO's, Roleplay Repository and more might come under scrutiny of the blacklist.
Worst of all, the stability of the internet itself, the source code and protocols that make it work, will become broken because they will change DNS lines and alter it. Websites not blocked by government firewalls and ISP forced shutdowns are no longer secure. Your browser no longer has the defenses it did, because most of those protection add-ons were created by freeware and independent programmers that no longer get revenue to do upkeep. If this bill and bills like it are passed, it will damage the integrity of the web, make your computer security non existent.
If it continues, the 'Protect IP' act will become a digital version of the Patriot Act. Big Brother was listening to your phone calls. Now he'll be watching the same movie you are, listening to the same music while you are, reading your emails before you get them, hovering over your shoulder while you online game.
The ability to protest, for free speech and the outlets for such are at risk of being taken down.
And if it takes hold in the U.S., it will set a precedent for other countries to follow.
And it isn't the government that will have the sole power. It's Corporate America. The businesses and owners. They will have right and power to go after anyone if they feel you are breaching copyright, trademark, etc.. It won't matter age, creed, gender, orientation, race, belief, station or anything else. The punishment is 5 years minimum of jail time, an exorbitant fee and abuse of rights and freedoms under what might be considered law.
Right now, many site owners, from Mozilla to Ebay to Google to Yahoo and more are banding together to get congress to stop it. But the more people to protest it the better chances we'll have. This goes far beyond movie piracy and torrenting. It is an attack on the ability to utilize free speech, a breach on what is a founding principle of the United States.
With bills like this getting as far as they do, we stand on the brink of a new age. The risk of becoming further force fed what the government and corporate businesses want us to read, watch, write about and learn about is on the doorstep. This isn't to sound like a nutter, but quite honestly, we are at the brink of having one of our biggest sources of information stripped from us and regulated much like it is in the Peoples Republic of China, where their access to world news online is fed through 'The Great Firewall of China', ISP moderators that oversee anything that is looked through in addition to digital surveillance and control systems.
Already we're at the point where those who execute their right to protest are being removed, covered up. Occupy Wallstreet's protesters where forcibly removed from Zickerman Park, 142 protesters jailed, 10 of which where journalists. And those journalists where the first to be removed by police so they wouldn't see what happened next.
How different is such a reaction from our government that different from China's? China, who has the most documented number of imprisoned journalists in the world for things like "Communicating with groups abroad", "Signing online petitions" and "calling for reform and an end to corruption". Starting to sound very familiar, in my opinion.
In fact, it's starting to sound a lot like a certain book that's been in print since 1953 about Firefighters that started fires, not stopped them. That's right, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. We're getting to the point where what we are allowed to read, write, watch and post will have to have government and corporate permission. It's a bit sickening, because if these bills go through, where will it stop? How is the power that they get going to be controlled? And what say are we going to really have at the end of these things? Those are only a few of my personal questions. But it all comes down to the same thing.
Stop the Internet Blacklist.
http://americancensorship.org/
http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html
Cinemablend Article on the bill.
New York Times Article on the bill.
Want to read the bill yourself? Find it here
Occu;y Wallstreet Eviction
Judge rules protesters can't occupy a public park
Protestors evicted
Test sites and see what ones are denied in China
Wikipedia on the Great Firewall
The Firewall
Internet Censorship in the Peoples Republic of China
BBC News on China's Firewall
However, it will cause a far deeper impact.
In short, sites like facebook, livejournal and twitter will require the owner to police their user base or shut down. Search engines and start up companies, people who make money off of hits and add revenue will be forced to close before they even begin. Your ISP's will be firewalling anything and everything that they remotely think is infringing, even if its not. This means that before you even get an email, that email has already been read by someone else, and the links that you could have used to research a school project or get info on a company you where interested in applying to will have been removed. It will become illegal to post a video of a family barbeque simply because your cousin sang karaoke of Katy Perry. The guy who does cover songs and mashups on youtube for fun? He's going to be sued.
People who make a living off of doing game walk throughs and reviews, like TotalBuscuit, The Escapist, Jessie Cox and The Yogscast will be shut down and lose income. Independent film companies like Dead Gentlemen Productions, creators of movies like 'The Gamers' and 'The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising' will be shut down for good.Blog sites, personal sites, art sites like FurAffinity, Deviantart and others will be shut down due to what might be seen as infringing media.
Game sites like Furcadia, forum roleplays, MMO's, Roleplay Repository and more might come under scrutiny of the blacklist.
Worst of all, the stability of the internet itself, the source code and protocols that make it work, will become broken because they will change DNS lines and alter it. Websites not blocked by government firewalls and ISP forced shutdowns are no longer secure. Your browser no longer has the defenses it did, because most of those protection add-ons were created by freeware and independent programmers that no longer get revenue to do upkeep. If this bill and bills like it are passed, it will damage the integrity of the web, make your computer security non existent.
If it continues, the 'Protect IP' act will become a digital version of the Patriot Act. Big Brother was listening to your phone calls. Now he'll be watching the same movie you are, listening to the same music while you are, reading your emails before you get them, hovering over your shoulder while you online game.
The ability to protest, for free speech and the outlets for such are at risk of being taken down.
And if it takes hold in the U.S., it will set a precedent for other countries to follow.
And it isn't the government that will have the sole power. It's Corporate America. The businesses and owners. They will have right and power to go after anyone if they feel you are breaching copyright, trademark, etc.. It won't matter age, creed, gender, orientation, race, belief, station or anything else. The punishment is 5 years minimum of jail time, an exorbitant fee and abuse of rights and freedoms under what might be considered law.
Right now, many site owners, from Mozilla to Ebay to Google to Yahoo and more are banding together to get congress to stop it. But the more people to protest it the better chances we'll have. This goes far beyond movie piracy and torrenting. It is an attack on the ability to utilize free speech, a breach on what is a founding principle of the United States.
With bills like this getting as far as they do, we stand on the brink of a new age. The risk of becoming further force fed what the government and corporate businesses want us to read, watch, write about and learn about is on the doorstep. This isn't to sound like a nutter, but quite honestly, we are at the brink of having one of our biggest sources of information stripped from us and regulated much like it is in the Peoples Republic of China, where their access to world news online is fed through 'The Great Firewall of China', ISP moderators that oversee anything that is looked through in addition to digital surveillance and control systems.
Already we're at the point where those who execute their right to protest are being removed, covered up. Occupy Wallstreet's protesters where forcibly removed from Zickerman Park, 142 protesters jailed, 10 of which where journalists. And those journalists where the first to be removed by police so they wouldn't see what happened next.
How different is such a reaction from our government that different from China's? China, who has the most documented number of imprisoned journalists in the world for things like "Communicating with groups abroad", "Signing online petitions" and "calling for reform and an end to corruption". Starting to sound very familiar, in my opinion.
In fact, it's starting to sound a lot like a certain book that's been in print since 1953 about Firefighters that started fires, not stopped them. That's right, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. We're getting to the point where what we are allowed to read, write, watch and post will have to have government and corporate permission. It's a bit sickening, because if these bills go through, where will it stop? How is the power that they get going to be controlled? And what say are we going to really have at the end of these things? Those are only a few of my personal questions. But it all comes down to the same thing.
Stop the Internet Blacklist.
http://americancensorship.org/
http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html
Cinemablend Article on the bill.
New York Times Article on the bill.
Want to read the bill yourself? Find it here
Occu;y Wallstreet Eviction
Judge rules protesters can't occupy a public park
Protestors evicted
Test sites and see what ones are denied in China
Wikipedia on the Great Firewall
The Firewall
Internet Censorship in the Peoples Republic of China
BBC News on China's Firewall
Signed it~. I enjoy listening to people singing cover songs on Youtube who make no profit from doing so (ie Pellek), and I'm a participating member of Deviantart. So this is relevant to my interests.
Oh man, I almost missed Censorship day! I've put up an official news post on this topic, because this issue is crucially important. You are absolutely correct, it could open up sites like this one to nuisance lawsuits and allow the entertainment industry to block US citizens from accessing social networks they feel aren't doing a good enough job of censoring their users.
This was originally meant to stop piracy, but the way it is worded is so sweeping that it is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. Thank you for posting this.
This was originally meant to stop piracy, but the way it is worded is so sweeping that it is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. Thank you for posting this.
RPR would get shut down just because of me. 
I am just having a discussion about this with some friends. I can understand the need to protect content from piracy but they are going about it completely the wrong way.
I'm not going into what they should do instead but I do agree that laws like this will make it impossible for websites with any kind of social features to function. And you know, these same companies rely on social media to spread the word about their new products. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot.
I'm not going into what they should do instead but I do agree that laws like this will make it impossible for websites with any kind of social features to function. And you know, these same companies rely on social media to spread the word about their new products. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot.
I remember the ACTA BS a couple of years back. They just don't know when to quit, do they?
I signed the petition.
Now I'm going to draw a reference of my Pokemon OC for her RPR page. Seems a lil' hilariously ironic atm. That's one of the things RPR could be blocked for, innit?
This also reminds me of that bill Schwarzenegger and some other CA senator wanted to pass to fine video game store owners for selling M rated games to minors AND change how video games are rated and how the ratings are displayed. I had to do an argument against the bill in my communications class-- I brought in some of my own video games (E+10 - T) to display their rating blurbs.
Now I'm going to draw a reference of my Pokemon OC for her RPR page. Seems a lil' hilariously ironic atm. That's one of the things RPR could be blocked for, innit?
This also reminds me of that bill Schwarzenegger and some other CA senator wanted to pass to fine video game store owners for selling M rated games to minors AND change how video games are rated and how the ratings are displayed. I had to do an argument against the bill in my communications class-- I brought in some of my own video games (E+10 - T) to display their rating blurbs.
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