Congress is once again selling out to corporations, and attempting to sell your civil liberties to the entertainment industry. The ramifications of the American government doing this would be to cripple free speech internationally. The bills, known as SOPA and PIPA, are opposed by wide swath of Americans that are small business owners, nerds, university professors, TEA Party activists, the Cato Institute, the ACLU, EFF, and many more organizations and individuals.
If you are unsure what this legislation is, or means for you, Randall Monroe has four good links posted on xkcd. If you want an easy way to contact your congressional delegation, the EFF has a super easy form letter you can send here.
Thanks for the EFF link. Congress is an absolute abomination. Does New Zealand have these problems?
ReplyDeleteNew Zealand has other problems that need to be addressed before they tackle censorship (their medical insurance program is going broke). Though the NZ Police and military will largely do what their big brothers ask them to, provided it does not involve nuclear material that is not for medical, safety, or scientific purposes. Copyright law is different here though, for example, down the street is the Friends cafe, written in stylized font with colored dots between each letter.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like Congress is going to try to do something else sneaky on this issue, but as long as all Americans agree that censorship in the name of corporate greed is unacceptable, maybe some of these bastards can be kept in check. A BBC story on the current state of SOPA and PIPA can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16655272.
Thanks for the links, Brian! Thankfully Murkowski and Begich, AK senators, both oppose these bills!
ReplyDeleteSimilar such nonsense is passing through the Canadian parliament (http://www.themuse.ca/articles/51280). My MSc supervisor explained that it is crippling universities and his ability to teach. Last year a professor at UBC was fined $7000 for using a picture of a globe in a lecture.
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