PDA

View Full Version : Senate to vote on internet censorship bill




Noob
09-29-2010, 12:17 AM
EFF needs your help to stop the Senate’s DNS censorship bill From: Peter Eckersley

You can find out more details on the bill here:

http://seclists.org/nanog/2010/Sep/783

https://eff.org/coica


Tell Your Senator: No Website Blacklists, No Internet Censorship!

Tell your Senator to reject the entertainment industry's outrageous Internet censorship bill that would blacklist websites, interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS), and legitimize unilateral Internet censorship worldwide. We fear the Senate may move forward with this bill as early as Wednesday, so please act now!

In the name of fighting copyright infringement, the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA) would put in place dangerous, overbroad procedures that would take huge numbers of law-abiding websites offline, censor speech and curtail Internet freedom worldwide.

The bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring ISPs, domain registrars, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites. Chillingly, the bill also allows the Justice Department to create a blacklist of sites "dedicated to infringing activities" that ISPs and others will be encouraged to block.

And there is a serious danger that COICA could damage Internet freedom worldwide. In the past, the United States has tried to convince other countries to respect citizens' fundamental right to free speech. But with this bill, the United States risks telling countries throughout the world, "Unilateral censorship of websites that the government doesn't like is okay — and this is how you do it."

Reports say that the Senate is moving fast and may try to pass this bill by Wednesday, September 29. That's why it's crucial to act now and let your Senator know that COICA is unacceptable before any votes take place!

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=455

Noob
09-30-2010, 02:51 PM
Senators Ease Off Internet 'Censorship' Bill After Outcry

Senate sponsors have eased off a bill aimed at cracking down on online piracy after an outcry from Internet engineers who say the proposal would effectively censor the Web.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act still would contain some highly controversial provisions, but senators proposed an amendment Wednesday to strip from the bill language that allowed the Justice Department to publish a blacklist of websites "dedicated to infringing activities."

Under the original bill, the Justice Department would be able to green light Internet service providers to go after those sites by providing them legal immunity.

The amendment also would lessen requirements on service providers to clean up their networks. But the bill would still give the attorney general broad new powers to seek court approval to shut down websites deemed dedicated to counterfeit material.

Internet advocates have warned that the change in law would open a door for a handful of people in the federal government to wantonly power off entire websites that may be operating legally under current law. Though senators suggest the bill would save jobs by cracking down on piracy, critics say it will hurt the economy by threatening fledgling companies whenever copyrighted material shows up on their sites.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/30/senators-ease-internet-censorship-outcry/

Stary Hickory
09-30-2010, 02:54 PM
Well thankfully this time the statist scumbags were backed off..man I am just getting sick of this. They have NO authority to regulate this. That is the problem we should not have to watch them like hawks.

Scipio
09-30-2010, 03:39 PM
Well thankfully this time the statist scumbags were backed off..man I am just getting sick of this. They have NO authority to regulate this. That is the problem we should not have to watch them like hawks.

It begins with an educated citizenry. History shows all governments, especially parlimentary governments continually push for more and more power, and they get it and they never lose any ground except for full blown revolution.

Maybe we should not have to watch them like hawks...but the truth is we DO have to watch them like hawks, always and forever until the end of government as we know it.

Matt Collins
09-30-2010, 04:00 PM
man I am just getting sick of this.The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Stary Hickory
09-30-2010, 04:17 PM
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

We dont have that and we need to reform the system, this is not working. They need to be downright afraid to even propose such krap. At this rate we may barely dent the speed of government growth. What we have now is unacceptable, it needs to be seriously kneecapped so it cannot do this anymore.