Congress wants to take away your internet! So PAY ATTENTION!!!

Originally posted by dynamicsymmetry Congress wants to take away your internet. Folks, I know you're tired of me yelling at you, but you should be aware that there's a hearing this morning being held by the US House Judiciary Committee on a "copyright" bill that will essentially break the entire internet.

You like the internet, right? I mean, you're here.

From the link above:

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.

It gets worse: Under SOPA's provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”).

This is being framed as an attempt to fight hackers and pirates. Don't buy it. And don't think for a minute that it's going to stop there. This is bad. And at the hearing today, only one opponent of the bill is being allowed to testify.

Please do whatever you can to fight this. Email congresspeople. Sign petitions. Yell about it in every venue you can.



And just to add my own personal note to this, the wording in the S.O.P.A. bill has changed somewhat. The new wording suggests that ATT, Comcast, and other web providers would be the ones blocking your access to certain sites.

They also want to add a technology called "deep packet inspection" which is "designed to monitor each and every bit and byte sent across a network, and has been heavily criticised as a targeted, privacy-invading approach to anti-piracy."

Yeah. Sure. And there's a bridge in Brooklyn you want to sell us, too, right?

Folks. Again, contact your congressperson. Complain. Tell him/her you won't be voting. Then call the tech companies that, unbelievably, are supporting this. Tell them in no uncertain terms that you won't be supporting them either. You won't be buying their products, using their services, and not only that, you are going to tell everyone you meet what they're trying to pull and encourage them to vote with their pocketbooks, too. Seriously.

Want to know who they are? Here's the top nine...

!. Apple
2. Microsoft
3. Adobe
4. Dell
5. Intel
6. McAfee
7. Rosetta Stone
8. Kaspersky
9. Symantec

I'm sorry to see Apple in that list, but it's more because they haven't spoken against it than what they've directly said. Still... silence implies compliance.

So, WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE? GO COMPLAIN, PEOPLE!! SHOO!!