SOPA: Opposed By The Entire Internet

The entertainment industry is lobbying for a dangerous “anti-piracy” bill that essentially gives the government the power to make websites accused of file-sharing vanish from the Internet – even if the accusation is unfounded or was caused by a random user. It’s a terrible, corrupt, and poorly written bill that will do nothing to solve the piracy problem but has a lot of potential to ruin the Internet. But don’t take my word for it. The founders of Google, Twitter, eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo, PayPal and more have sent a joint letter to Congress in opposition. So did 83 Internet engineers who helped create the original protocols that made the Internet work. Tumblr mobilized its users into making over 87,000 calls to Congress, and thousands of other websites are working with American Censorship to do the same thing. Techcrunch hates it. Gizmodo hates it. The primary editors of Wikipedia, the fifth-most popular website in the world, are considering blacking out the entire site for a day in protest (I really hope they do; it looks like about 89% of them support the idea).

So far it has been to no avail. Yesterday – the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights – the House Judiciary Committee debated SOPA – the “Stop Online Piracy Act” – in an effort to bring it before the House for a vote. For over 12 hours, attempts to amend the bill and make it less dangerous were shot down, despite the fact that it became painfully obvious to anyone watching on C-SPAN that these Congressmen don’t know the difference between DNS and an IP address. (If your bill needs to be amended to ensure you don’t sue a refrigerator, it’s broken.)

Washington Post blogger Alexandra Petri had a good summary. Watching people who grew up without the Internet debate on a bill that would censor it was like “a group of well-intentioned amateurs getting together to perform heart surgery on a patient incapable of moving. ‘We hear from the motion picture industry that heart surgery is what’s required,’ they say cheerily. ‘We’re not going to cut the good valves, just the bad – neurons, or whatever you call those durn thingies.'” And: “As a general rule, when the people saying that this will have a horrible, chilling impact on something are the ones who created that thing in the first place, and the people who are saying, ‘Oh, no, it’ll be fine, it only targets the bad actors’ are members of the Motion Picture Association of America, it seems obvious whose opinion you should heed.”

I don’t know if this bill will really kill the Internet or not – but it’s hard to be skeptical when it is strongly opposed by pretty much everyone who created the Internet and the tools that run on it. (There’s actually a Senate version called PIPA that everyone hates too, but the House’s SOPA is closer to coming to a vote and it’s the one that everyone is focused on right now.) It’s fun to watch the Internet mobilize against this bill, but the RIAA and MPAA have a powerful enough hold on Congress that they may still get their way. Please join the fight and contact the House representative in your district, asking him or her to oppose this dangerous bill if/when it comes up for a vote or else they will lose your vote.

(With Fight For the Future, it’s incredibly easy. Go there, enter your phone number and address, and they will call you with some helpful talking points and then connect you straight to your representative. If the Internet has done anything to enhance your life, please join us and call today!)