I have no idea if this is a lot of grandstanding, but there's a site about it, and here's their case:
On 11/16, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system. This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same. Join all of us on the 16th to stop this bill.
Website Blocking The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.
Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.
Chaos for the Internet Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn't be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.
This is an extremely dangerous bill that is going to very likely pass without much resistance. This is pretty much a PATRIOT Act for the internet,, but instead of being propped up as a way to prevent terrorism, it is there to give the MAFIAA and those that ride their coat-tails more copyright protection. It's too bad that the government couldn't spend as much time fixing the total collapse of the economy as they do making sure that the corporate lobbyists are happy.
I didn't catch any of the SOPA congressional hearing webcast yesterday, but it seems like the powers that be who want SOPA enacted aren't that keen on listening intently to the opposition case.
Needless to say, SOPA is bad news. I'm unsure what the total consequences of the bill would be for software, the Internet, and innovation to a larger extent since patent acquisition and infringement defenses are commonplace anyway (like Apple vs. HTC/Samsung). I'd say the companies that do sell licenses such as Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc. see this as more of an anti-counterfeiting bill than anything that would potentially fatten their bottom lines again.
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by StlSluggers » Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:08 am 
