Oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act
As a consumer and user of the Internet, I oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act in its current form.
While I believe it's important to protect copyrighted material online, the language of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is flawed and will lead to the blocking of lawful content.
Unlike the Senate version of the bill, SOPA eliminates the concept of sites 'dedicated to infringing activity' and enables law enforcement to target all sites that contain some infringing content -- no matter how trivial. The potential for impact on non-infringing content is much greater under SOPA than under other versions of this bill. Sites with user-generated content, like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, would be especially vulnerable, as one small piece of infringing content could lead to blocking the entire site.
Even though proposed changes would narrow the amount of lawful content impacted, the changes don't go far enough. It is still likely that search engines will end up blocking access to perfectly legal online content.
Congress should focus not just on the goal of protecting copyright owners, but also protecting the speech rights of consumers and providers who are reading and producing wholly non-infringing content. Congress must eliminate the collateral damage to protected non-infringing content. Only in that way will Congress truly achieve its goal of protecting authors while respecting the constitutional right to free speech.
Please set aside this bill in its entirety, or reformulate the bill so it is narrowly focused on providing an effective and adequate remedy to those content producers whose copyright interests are infringed by the online activities of others, without impacting non-infringing content.
The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country
http://www.aclu.org/key-issues
While I believe it's important to protect copyrighted material online, the language of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is flawed and will lead to the blocking of lawful content.
Unlike the Senate version of the bill, SOPA eliminates the concept of sites 'dedicated to infringing activity' and enables law enforcement to target all sites that contain some infringing content -- no matter how trivial. The potential for impact on non-infringing content is much greater under SOPA than under other versions of this bill. Sites with user-generated content, like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, would be especially vulnerable, as one small piece of infringing content could lead to blocking the entire site.
Even though proposed changes would narrow the amount of lawful content impacted, the changes don't go far enough. It is still likely that search engines will end up blocking access to perfectly legal online content.
Congress should focus not just on the goal of protecting copyright owners, but also protecting the speech rights of consumers and providers who are reading and producing wholly non-infringing content. Congress must eliminate the collateral damage to protected non-infringing content. Only in that way will Congress truly achieve its goal of protecting authors while respecting the constitutional right to free speech.
Please set aside this bill in its entirety, or reformulate the bill so it is narrowly focused on providing an effective and adequate remedy to those content producers whose copyright interests are infringed by the online activities of others, without impacting non-infringing content.
The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country
http://www.aclu.org/key-issues
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