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Uncategorized Thursday, November 17th 2011 at 9:45 am

Biggest Names Online Take Out Full Page Ad in NYTimes Speaking Against SOPA

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Yesterday, a group of nine of the biggest online companies took out a full page ad in the New York Times to voice their concern over two pieces of legislation in congress that could greatly affect the way America uses the Internet. In the letter, Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and AOL ask that their point of view be heard regarding the Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act.

In their ad, the companies say that though they support new tools to take down websites that solely provide copyright infringing activities, they are concerned that the legislation as it stands would greatly harm their ability to do business and would hamper the continued growth of a highly profitable sector of the U.S. economy. Specifically, they voice concern over the elimination of so-called “safe harbours” created by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This gave protection to companies that acted in good faith to remove infringing content from their services.

(via BoingBoing)

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  • http://twitter.com/PestControlCtr Pest Control Center

    If the problem is foreign rogue websites how will regulating US internet companies help?  The governments where those sites are located must do the policing.  This is some of the same fuzzy headed thinking that damages so much of our economy with over-regulation.  “Criminals are committing crimes so lets penalize law abiding citizens in order to stop the criminals.”  Duh!

  • Not Myname

    The idea is that SOPA allows copyright holders to require ISPs to block those sites entirely. It can be circumvented, and it won’t fix the problem they’re trying to solve, but there’s at least -some- logic behind it. That said, I’ve mailed my congressmen, and you should do the same.

  • Adamsmith

    glad i don’t live in the states. the greed of the wealthy in america is unbelievable. they start unjust wars, destroy the environment, etc and get away with it. however tho, generally speaking, if a usually upstanding member of the public should pirate 1 movie, let’s criminalize them. couple of thoughts on that. firstly, why is it that so many people are being criminalized in the U.S for minor infractions?? hmm is it because some stand to vastly profit from the growing rates of incarceration?? secondly, most american movies are shit and not worth paying for. i feel violated each time i have to watch some of that crap. however the net/online piracy does allow for the propagation of such hopeless content so therefore this bill might actually stem the flow to a certain extent. actually, i have changed my mind, the the bill go ahead.