November 22, 2011 at 14:38Success in the fight against SOPA
Google 's Matt Cutts highlighted recent successes in the fight against the SOPA and PROTECT IP bills, which are currently being considered in the US Parliament and suggest large-scale measures against Internet piracy: blocking access to foreign pirated sites, disabling their financial services, site responsibility for user-posted content , imprisonment of up to five years for users who post pirated content, and so on.
New legislation promotes Hollywood with RIAA and MPAA, supports BSA* (among its members are Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Intel, and another 24 technology companies). Actively opposed by Google, Twitter, Mozilla, Facebook, Yahoo, other representatives of the Internet industry, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users.
Matt Cutts says that, among other things, thanks to an organized public campaign against SOPA and PROTECT IP, over the past week there have been many positive developments that could tip the balance in our direction. First, some representatives of both the Republican and the Democratic parties in the House of Representatives and in the Senate opposed the new bills, calling them "too radical." Thus, a “progressive” lobby is being formed in both parties, with the help of which it is possible to block these legislative initiatives in both houses of parliament.
Secondly, the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution criticizing the SOPA . The resolution emphasizes "the need to protect the integrity of the global Web and freedom of communication."
Further, experts at Sandia National Laboratories (a division of the US Department of Energy) expressed the view that new legislation would adversely affect the security and functionality of the Internet globally, including reducing US cybersecurity.
The response from Internet users, Matt Cutts writes, was simply stunning and unanimous. Tumblr website launched a page calling to call / write your congressman and express your opinion, as a result 87,000 were madecalls. SOPA and PROTECT IP searches are among the top Google searches. Last Wednesday, four of the ten most popular queries on Google were on this topic, and the request [Internet censorship] remained in the top three most popular queries in the following days.
Matt Cutts emphasizes that the forces of the IT industry against SOPA are clearly unequal, because the entertainment industry spends an order of magnitude more to lobby for its interests in Washington.
In addition, politicians themselves are poorly versed in technological matters: there are only six engineers in the US parliament .
However, due to a single position and public protest, there is still a chance to stop these bills.
* UPD. BSA AllianceHe refused to support SOPA, offering to send it for revision "to clarify the wording."
New legislation promotes Hollywood with RIAA and MPAA, supports BSA* (among its members are Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Intel, and another 24 technology companies). Actively opposed by Google, Twitter, Mozilla, Facebook, Yahoo, other representatives of the Internet industry, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users.
Matt Cutts says that, among other things, thanks to an organized public campaign against SOPA and PROTECT IP, over the past week there have been many positive developments that could tip the balance in our direction. First, some representatives of both the Republican and the Democratic parties in the House of Representatives and in the Senate opposed the new bills, calling them "too radical." Thus, a “progressive” lobby is being formed in both parties, with the help of which it is possible to block these legislative initiatives in both houses of parliament.
Secondly, the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution criticizing the SOPA . The resolution emphasizes "the need to protect the integrity of the global Web and freedom of communication."
Further, experts at Sandia National Laboratories (a division of the US Department of Energy) expressed the view that new legislation would adversely affect the security and functionality of the Internet globally, including reducing US cybersecurity.
The response from Internet users, Matt Cutts writes, was simply stunning and unanimous. Tumblr website launched a page calling to call / write your congressman and express your opinion, as a result 87,000 were madecalls. SOPA and PROTECT IP searches are among the top Google searches. Last Wednesday, four of the ten most popular queries on Google were on this topic, and the request [Internet censorship] remained in the top three most popular queries in the following days.
Matt Cutts emphasizes that the forces of the IT industry against SOPA are clearly unequal, because the entertainment industry spends an order of magnitude more to lobby for its interests in Washington.
In addition, politicians themselves are poorly versed in technological matters: there are only six engineers in the US parliament .
However, due to a single position and public protest, there is still a chance to stop these bills.
* UPD. BSA AllianceHe refused to support SOPA, offering to send it for revision "to clarify the wording."