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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Protect IP Act a danger to free speech

  If you followed the Righthaven mess, you're probably really glad it seems to have been settled by the courts, although they are appealing the many court decisions which have slapped them down.
  Righthaven is a legal organization created by the Las Vegas Review Journal conglomerate to go after bloggers who post anything from their websites on their own blogs. This included small bits of text (you know, like when referencing articles using the Fair Use Act for discussion purposes.)
  There were many problems with this monster, particularly that websites that used even a photograph without specific permission were liable to be sued. Righthaven threatened lawsuits in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, confiscated blog names and settled for much less. 
  Do these people understand the term "World Wide WEB"?
  WEB: something formed by interweaving.
  Interweaving articles, news stories, commentary...that sort of thing.
  It looks like Congress is set to approve something like the  Americans With Disabilities Act only this time for the internet.
  As usual, Congress felt a need to intervene to "hep people," so they passed the ADA, which has gone on to destroy many small businesses and have serious financial consequences around the country. No one's disputing that ADA access has helped millions of disabled people, but when the ADA is abused by people to simply make money, like $12,000 a day, something's wrong with the good intentions of the Act itself.
  Devising complicated schemes with unintended consequences to defend special interest groups, in case Hollywood and music moguls, is Congress's specialty, however. 
  And, oddly, the right and the left are united in opposition to the Protect IP Act hovering in the Senate like a light bulb smasher.
  From the Guardian, Eric Schmidt voices his opposition, comparing the legislation to "China's restrictive internet regime." (Note: Didn't Google support China in its endeavors to block words like "democracy"?)
Schmidt, who became Google's executive chairman last month after a decade as its chief executive, described website blocking as akin to China's restrictive internet regime. 
"I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems," he said. "So, 'let's whack off the DNS'. Okay, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say 'I don't like free speech so I'll whack off all those DNSs' – that country would be China. 
"It doesn't seem right. I would be very, very careful about that stuff. If [the UK government] do it the wrong way it could have disastrous precedent setting in other areas."
  Concern mounts around the country for yet another intrusion into the rights of Americans and free speech.
  Considering that the feds have already shut down numerous websites, (84,000 ACCIDENTALLY) using Homeland Security, Department of Justice and ICE, and considering that they just shut down another group of websites a week ago, anything could happen with this.
  Social network websites like Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are threatened by this act, which tech dirt describes as "incredibly broad."
  We OPPOSE the Protect IP Act.
  Here's video that explains it.

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