The so-called Stop Online Piracy Act which is wending its way through Congress is, by all accounts, a horrible bill. In the guise of combating online piracy (I won’t get into my opinions on the futility of that here), the bill would give the federal government the power to shut down pretty much any Web site it deems is facilitating piracy. It’s so bad that sites like Google and Twitter have threatened a blackout in protest.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is recommending amendments to the bill but is also planning on holding hearings on the bill on Jan. 18 (time yet to be determined).
The witnesses include:
Mr. Stewart Baker: Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP, Mr. Brad Burnham: Partner, Union Square Ventures, Mr. Daniel Kaminsky: Security Researcher and Fortune 500 Advisor,Mr. Michael Macleod-Ball: Chief of Staff/First Amendment Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union,Mr. Lanham Napier: Chief Executive Officer, Rackspace Hosting, Dr. Leonard Napolitano: Director, Center for Computer Sciences & Information Technology Sandia National Laboratories and Mr. Alexis Ohanian: Co-Founder, Reddit.com, and Web Entrepreneur.
It must be noted this bill could shut down the blogosphere and aggregators like Matt Drudge as well.
Contact your congressmen and senators and urge them to vote against this bill.
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