For those of you that don’t know, a group of U.S. senators, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, have been working to provide a bill that would allow the Federal Government to take over or shut down websites if they were found to be terroristic in nature or that violate copyright protections. Unfortunately, every draft of this bill has been labeled “censorship” as they can’t seem to craft legislation that doesn’t censor the internet in some massive way.
The previous bill was referred to as COICA and the draft that was leaked online yesterday is referred to as the PROTECT IP Act.
Ars Technica broke the story on Tuesday, which according to their blog post, “search engines, internet providers, credit card companies and ad networks would all have cut off access to foreign ‘rogue sites’ – and such court orders would not be limited to the government.” In lamens terms, this means that per a court order, the federal government could simply request that a website be removed from the web and all of those parties listed above would have to comply. In addition, this new bill would allow private rightsholders, or those that hold a copyright, to go to court and target foreign domains as well.
Last week, Mozilla, owner of the browser Firefox, was asked by Homeland Security to remove a Firefox add-on that would make it incredibly easy to bypass a domain name seizure. Well, with the new PROTECT IP bill, it seems that intermediaries like Firefox and Google would be asked to take action to remove these sites after a court order, or for them to take unilateral action without any sort of court order. The Federal Government could simply force web-based companies to drop support or rankings for a foreign site at will based on its content. I believe that to be a direct violation of our Freedom of Speech.
While conceptually the bill is trying to protect copyright holders, it is also actively infringing on other organizations that are either already burdened with heavy regulation or those whose freedom of speech is critical to maintaining a “free web.”
Weigh in and let us know your thoughts. Below are a few additional resources that were shared via Twitter from Matt Cutts this morning.
Ars Technica – Revised ‘Net Censorship Bill Requires Search Engines to Block Sites, Too
Tech Dirt – Full Text of the Protect IP Act Released: The Good, the Bad and The Horribly Ugly
This blog post does not necessarily reflect the feelings of Red Clay Interactive, only those of this rogue employee, Nick K.
I wholeheartedly agree, Nick. This bill is in direct conflict of the constitution of the United States, and would infringe on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and US citizens’ rights to access the world’s greatest information network. We all know that once the government gets the first of this kind of power, there will continue to be more to come and the result will be censorship of the internet in America. That is a dark and frightening road that our country needs to avoid at all costs.