Call it ironic, but netizens in the US are going to face Internet censorship soon if "somebody" ain't gonna do something about it. Even though the US government had been acting strong against Internet censorship in many other countries on the globe it seems to be favouring it on its own turf, However "somebody" seems to be against it and its none other than the FSF. After successfully countering an earlier version of the same bill favouring Internet censorship, it is calling on all its members to act against its new avatar. 

As usual the FSF has send out a mail to its subscribers about the impending threat to their freedoms. The following has been taken from their mail. 

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Join us, EFF, Demand Progress, and Fight for The Future in opposing the latest round of Internet Blacklist legislation. 

Take action and sign petitions on the following sites:

EFF

Demand Progress

Fight For the Future

The EFF explains the legislation, which is titled the PROTECT-IP Act in the Senate and SOPA in the House, as follows

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.

It gets worse: Under SOPA's provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”).

This legislation is an example of the severely flawed thinking you get when approaching issues in terms of "intellectual property".



We helped stop this bill before, but now it's back under a different name. Please take a minute and help stop this one too!

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If you have found the activities of the FSF interesting and important then please find time to show your support their activities through -  http://fsf.org/