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| source: xkcd (aka the greatest webcomic of all time) |
gives content creators the power to force ISPs, search engines or payment services to shut down access to a Web site that the owner believes violated its copyright. On its face, the bill is designed to stop access to foreign Web sites that are profiting off of stolen content. (U.S.-based business can simply be dragged into court.) In reality, it’s much more insidious than that.
Say a French company just started a social networking site in which users can upload videos of themselves singing. Now let’s say some kids upload a video of themselves singing their favorite Britney Spears song, not even playing back the original recording but simply singing along innocently to a song they like.
In the eyes of Spears’s record label or any number of parties associated with her continued cash flow, that might very well look like an instance of piracy — and indeed, major labels have had content pulled off YouTube for similar “violations.” All the label has to do is send a letter to someone such as your ISP and request that the service stop routing traffic to the offending site, and, boom, no more French-sharing site for U.S. Internet users. And what’s really scary is that U.S. Internet service providers have immunity when it comes to what they can pull from their networks, so that French site might not even have a clear path to resolving the issue.
Now take that concept and begin to apply it across all the places you could potentially find “infringing” material. Sites about art, sites about movies, sites that let users generate content of all types — some of that content containing pieces of other work that should be considered fair use by any modern standard. Suddenly, a lot of destinations on the Internet will begin to look like island vacation spots — that is, they’re really hard to get to. And the impact won’t just be cultural or legal; the technical workings of the Internet itself will be dramatically affected.
Net Neutrality is the cornerstone of innovation, free speech and democracy on the Internet.I contacted my representative via this site: http://www.savetheinternet.com/
More than 2 million Americans have expressed support for Net Neutrality at Congress and the FCC. They want control over the Internet to remain in the hands of the people who use it every day.
Please stand with the public by protecting Net Neutrality once and for all.
As a 20-something in today's society, I've grown up on the internet. I trust it as a source of free information and use it for many hours a day to meet many of my needs. I also publish lots of my own content, and my father runs an online business, and it would be truly unjust for either of our sites to be affected by the end of Net Neutrality. People of my generation and every generation depend on the internet; don't let it be fundamentally and irrevocably changed. Don't let the American values of free speech and free commerce be trampled on. Please support Net Neutrality. I recognize that very serious infringements are regularly being made possible by the internet, but there must be other, less potentially damaging, ways to protect corporations against such infringements and punish wrongdoers. Please vote against SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act, which could very well do more to censor legitimate free speech than to control the illegitimate spread of intellectual property. Please protect American consumers and maintain the free, open, user-determined nature of the internet by supporting The Internet Freedom, Broadband Promotion and Consumer Protection Act of 2011.
I'm begging you.
Maya Reid
Princeton University, Class of 2012
