Internet Piracy Bill: A Free Speech ‘Kill Switch’
December 12th, 2011Via: The Hill:
What began as an attempt to restrain foreign piracy on the Internet has morphed into a domestic “kill switch” on First Amendment freedom in the fastest-growing corner of the marketplace of ideas.
Proposed federal legislation purporting to protect online intellectual property would also impose sweeping new government mandates on internet service providers – a positively Orwellian power grab that would permit the U.S. Justice Department to shut down any internet site it doesn’t like (and cut off its sources of income) on nothing more than a whim.
Under the so-called “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) the federal government – which is prohibited constitutionally from abridging free speech or depriving its citizens of their property without due process – would engage in both practices on an unprecedented scale. And in establishing the precursor to a taxpayer-funded “thought police,” it would dramatically curtail technology investment and innovation – wreaking havoc on our economy.
Related: Criminalize Linking
the comments on that source site are really something. all the posts i looked at had similarly inflammatory/inflamed readers (from both sides of the fence).
scary stuff.
also, yeah, this bill would do just about nothing to stop “true” piracy members-only type sharing clubs. what a load of not-even-trying-to-hide-our-agenda powergrab shite. it’s chilling that tptb don’t even bother to pretend like they aren’t flippantly ignoring the constitution these days.