Stop SOPA/PIPA and HR 3699

I don't normally drag political issues onto the pages of XMLToday, but the onslaught of bad legislation that are little more than corporate power grabs needs to be stopped. SOPA and PIPA, intended to "protect" intellectual property, looks like an open invitation not only to dismantle the open source community, but could be used to imprison people who argue against the government or against powerful corporate sponsors. The Research Works Act (HR 3699) is similarly intended to stifle the free exchange of publicly funded research and put control of this research into the hands of corporations that will use the fruits of the research for their own ends and will hide research counter to their corporate mandates. All of these bills are extraordinarily dangerous, and that they are even being considered is a measure of how corrupt Congress is becoming.

From Wikipedia, which today has gone dark:

About the action

• The Wikipedia community has blacked out the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours on January 18th to raise awareness about legislation being proposed by the U.S. Congress — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate -- and to encourage readers to speak out against it. This legislation, if passed, will harm the free and open Internet. If you are in the United States, let your congressional representative know what you think of the proposed legislation by clicking here.
• The blackout will last 24 hours - from midnight to midnight EST (05:00 UTC Wed to 05:00 UTC Thu).
• This decision was made by Wikipedia’s global community of editors -- the people who built Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, also opposes SOPA and PIPA, and supports the editors' blackout.
• SOPA and PIPA are real threats to the free and open Internet. Although recent media reports have suggested that the bills are losing support, they are not dead. On January 17th, SOPA's sponsor said the bill will be discussed and pushed forward in early February. PIPA could be debated in the U.S. Senate as soon as next week. There is a need to send a strong message that bills like SOPA and PIPA must not move forward: they will cause too much damage.
• Although the bills have been amended since their introduction, they are still deeply problematic. Among other serious problems in the current draft of the bills, the requirement exists for US-based sites to actively police links to purported infringing sites. These kinds of self-policing activities are non-sustainable for large, global sites - including ones like Wikipedia. The legislative language is ambiguous and overly broad, even though it touches on protected speech. Congress says it's trying to protect the rights of copyright owners, but the "cure" that SOPA and PIPA represent is worse than the disease.

This year has been shaping up as an all-out assault on civil liberties by a reactionary Congress, most beholden to deep pocketed billionaires who increasingly see their privileges in jeopardy from the rising demand for transparency, fairness and accountability, and are reacting by pushing Congress into making these draconian actions. Already, the rights to free assembly, free speech, unreasonable search and seizure, due process and the right to vote itself have been significantly eroded. SOPA continues this trend by making it possible to clamp down on the bedrock of the Internet, the open source movement, as well as by making it possible, through excessively broad wording, for authorities to shut down websites that are seen as being counter to a given industry's profit motives or as being too seditious.

A similar effort is underway by Rep. Darryl Issah of California in HR. 3699. In effect, the Research Works Act makes it possible for the government to reward the right to disseminate publicly funded research work exclusively through private per-pay channels. The immediate consequence of this is that the growing open sharing of resource between universities and government research facilities would immediately stop, and any such research would then have to go through publishers who both control which research gets disseminated and which doesn't and who can restrict research to the highest bidder. The broader term consequences are even more troublesome - under this legislation, the government would in effect be subsidizing the research of private corporations who have paid to keep such research hidden, even though the research was paid for with taxpayer funds. Not only would this prove chilling for research, but it insures that research which is in the public's best interest - that related to potential health and environmental issues - would never see the light of day.

These bills are being passed in the name of combating piracy, increasing security and protecting American jobs, but they are in fact the worst forms of law - so broadly written that they can (and no doubt eventually will) be used as a means to both restrict free speech and to privatize the commons for the benefit of the few.

For more information, please read Wikipedia's SOPA Initiative, and become active in the protests against these odious pieces of legislation.