The Electronic Frontier Foundation leads the fight against the draconian and backwards thinking Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA:
This is the third in our series Part 1, Part 2 breaking down the potential effects of the Stop Online Piracy Act SOPA, an outrageous and grievously misguided bill now working its way through the House of Representatives. This post discusses dangerous software censorship provisions that are new in this bill, as well as the DNS censorship provisions it inherited from the Senates COICA and PIPA bills. Please help us fight this misguided legislation by contacting Congress today.
via Hollywoods New War on Software Freedom and Internet Innovation | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Our honorable members of Congress seems to have so much time on their hands after fixing our economy and lack of jobs that they can think up clever names with equally smart acronyms for their proposed legislation–PROTECT-IP in the Senate and SOPA in the House.
SOPA goes beyond breaking the domain name system (DNS) like in PROTECT-IP by putting software developers in the crosshairs of big media conglomerates and their proposed muscle: the US Attorney General.
Techdirt has a great analysis of SOPA from the perspective of software developers here. Essentially, they argue that big media is pushing legislation to further address their BUSINESS problem through LEGISLATION.
Digital culture today would likely be much more open and consumer oriented if we didn’t have laws like the DMCA. SOPA will stifle things even more than the DMCA. Additionally, I don’t believe that laws should be made to support an industry unwilling to transform itself to accommodate the reality of digital culture today. The next step could be subsidies for an industry that can afford to give its CEOs pay raises in the MILLIONS. You shouldn’t let this happen–let your members of Congress know that you don’t agree with this law, and let President Obama know that should such a law pass both houses he should veto it.
Dynamic Subspace 