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Does the acronym PIPA mean anything to you? Well, it should. It represents the PROTECT IP Act, otherwise known as the Internet Blacklist Bill. This act, currently being considered by Congress, would give the government the power to block access to sites accused of copyright infringement, through control of “information location tools” such as Google. This is a clear case of censorship, and it must be stopped. Demand Progress has already helped 24,000 letters of opposition be sent to Congress, but the more support we have, the more impact we’ll have.

Will you email Congress to urge them to oppose the Protect IP Act?

We are facing significant opposition from corporations such as the Motion Picture Association of America, who are doing everything in their power to discredit our campaign and end our efforts. They have gone so far as to claim that we’ve used fake names on our petition. They’re clearly feeling threatened by the support we’ve gained, which means what we’re doing is working. But we can’t relax now—the most important fight is yet to come, as Congress decides whether or not to pass the bill.

You can help by signing our petition and by contacting your senators through the links provided on our website. By emailing them directly, you’ll be proving the MPAA wrong and making a stand for a free and uncensored Internet. Please help us by telling Congress that this bill is unacceptable.

You can learn more about Demand Progress, our campaigns, and PIPA on our website, demandprogress.org.

  • Thanks for posting. I’ll simply state, in order to avoid any supposition that I am implicitly endorsing your position by having it posted on my blog, that I believe that copyright protection is necessary, and that internet infringements need to be policed in a reasonable way. I do not know the details of PIPA, and make no judgment about it one way or the other. However, to equate attempts to prevent copyright infringements with “censorship” is to use the language fast and loose: Speech is one thing, and theft is another. On the face of it, this bill appears to target only those sites that have stolen copyright protected material, and only to address the problem of their stealing copyright protected material. There is nothing inherently wrong with that (again, I’d have to take some time to study the bill itself to determine whether their is anything objectionable to this particular specimen).

  • It’s a terrible law, and I urge you to look at it more closely.

    It’s yet another power grab by the folks at the RIAA and similar. Like you, I oppose theft. But the desperately-draconian measures already being taken to deal with it affect us all.

    If someone walks out without paying his bill in a restaurant, we don’t tell grocery stores they have to stop letting him buy food.

    Not only do we consider that excessive — it wouldn’t even occur to us to put that enforcement burden on the grocery store.

    I don’t think the word “censorship” really fits here, but speech is definitely a problem. Domain names are an essential part of speech on the internet, and an attack on domain names is an attack on someone’s speech, and the power to publicly state their position about the very matter with which they were charged. I believe it to be unconstitutional on those grounds, but then, I often disagree with the Supreme Court on such matters.

    But even aside from that, I believe it is bad policy, and isn’t going to do a speck of good. It’s just another hammer. We have hammers. But this one has a flexible rubber handle and an affinity for thumbs.

    You can read the text here:

    http://leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/BillText-PROTECTIPAct.pdf

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