…. but we’re not dead yet!
The U.S. Congress is currently considering the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), that are among the two most anti-global and anti-social law proposals to appear before congress since the Patriot Act (which was the end of one of our civilization’s greatest principles – Habeas Corpus). If passed, the laws will grant powers to the US Government that only the US Government perceive themselves to have, thinking about "the Internet kill-switch", however the side-effects to the practical realities of the way the Internet is run will pose a threat to its statelessness, as well as pave way for enlarging corporate control over Internet content. Read more here on Wikipedia: Stop Online Piracy Act and Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act.
Other sites, such as Wired.com, reddit and Mozilla followed Wikipedia’s example today. As did Google, 4chan, Vimeo, flickr, Miro, MineCraft, PostSecret, and many others, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation!
The Acts’ names are misleading, even if you are an adherer to the notion of "intellectual property", these laws will introduce Government censorship that invariably and inevitably hurts the common man’s interests and favor those few at the top, the large corporations, and those that’d rather see an Internet akin to cable television.
For the moment, it appears netizens have won!
Yes!
However, I fear that these bills will be re-written (this is the 2nd time a SOPA-like law was proposed) until passed in Congress.. It’s time people set their foot down and say ENUFF WITH THE BS!
ACTA is as bad as SOPA/PIPA.
Yes, it is! That’s why we must fight it too. It was recently supported by a large member of EU states, but that doesn’t really matter as it is decided by the EU parliament. They have made some good decisions earlier (such as the data retention law that was denied), so I hope they deny ACTA too.