New Year's Resolution: Stop SOPA

The attempt by government bureaucrats to get their regulatory hooks into your vitamin supplements is bad enough--now they want to come after the Internet.

Bipartisan opposition does, however, seem to be mounting against the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)--which could lead to censorship on the web--that is pending in Congress.

Here's what the Electronic Frontier Foundation had to say about this onerous bill:

The "Stop Online Piracy Act"/"E-PARASITE Act" (SOPA) and "The PROTECT IP Act" (PIPA) are the latest in a series of bills which would create a procedure for creating (and censoring) a blacklist of websites. These bills are updated versions of the “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act" (COICA), which was previously blocked in the Senate. Although the bills are ostensibly aimed at reaching foreign websites dedicated to providing illegal content, their provisions would allow for removal of enormous amounts of non-infringing content including political and other speech from the Web.

...Had these bills been passed five or ten years ago, even YouTube might not exist today — in other words, the collateral damage from this legislation would be enormous.

 Important Internet pioneers have also registered their strong opposition according to PCWorld:

What happens when you combine an overzealous drive to fight Internet piracy, with elected representatives who don’t know the difference between DNS, IM, and MP3? You get SOPA--draconian legislation that far exceeds its intended scope, and threatens the Constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. And it may just pass.

An open letter to Congress written by luminaries of the Internet, such as Vint Cerf--co-designer of TCP/IP, and Robert W. Taylor--founder of ARPAnet among others, implores Congress to back off and squash both SOPA, and its sibling PIPA legislation. The letter states, “If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure.”

The letter goes on to ominously caution Congress. “If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive."

...If the bill passes, it could have devastating, cascading consequences that ripple across the Internet and affect the freedom and civil liberties of every citizen of the United States. It seems our current elected representatives may just be dumb and/or crazy enough to pass it, though—so speak up and let your representative and senators know what you think of SOPA.

Members of Congress such as Darrell Issa and Jason Chafetz (see videos below) are leading the the effort to keep the Internet open and free. Have you contacted your congressional representative to stop SOPA?