SOPA would likely cause far more damage than it’s worth, keep the internet free…

SOPA would like­ly cause far more dam­age than it’s worth, keep the inter­net free from cor­po­rate cen­sor­ship. #sopa #inter­net

Reshared post from +Sergey Brin

In just two decades, the world wide web has trans­formed and democ­ra­tized access to infor­ma­tion all around the world. I am proud of the role Google has played along­side many oth­ers such as Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Twit­ter. Whether you are a stu­dent in an inter­net cafe in the devel­op­ing world or a head of state of a wealthy nation, the knowl­edge of the world is at your fingertips.

Of course, offer­ing these ser­vices has come with its chal­lenges. Mul­ti­ple coun­tries have sought to sup­press the flow of infor­ma­tion to serve their own polit­i­cal goals. At var­i­ous times notable Google web­sites have been blocked in Chi­na, Iran, Libya (pri­or to their rev­o­lu­tion), Tunisia (also pri­or to rev­o­lu­tion), and oth­ers. For our own web­sites and for the inter­net as a whole we have worked tire­less­ly to com­bat inter­net cen­sor­ship around the world along­side gov­ern­ments and NGO pro­mot­ing free speech.

Thus, imag­ine my aston­ish­ment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none oth­er but the Unit­ed States. Two bills cur­rent­ly mak­ing their way through con­gress — SOPA and PIPA — give the US gov­ern­ment and copy­right hold­ers extra­or­di­nary pow­ers includ­ing the abil­i­ty to hijack DNS and cen­sor search results (and this is even with­out so much as a prop­er court tri­al). While I sup­port their goal of reduc­ing copy­right infringe­ment (which I don’t believe these acts would accom­plish), I am shocked that our law­mak­ers would con­tem­plate such mea­sures that would put us on a par with the most oppres­sive nations in the world.

This is why I signed on to the fol­low­ing open let­ter with many oth­er founders — http://​dq99alanzv66m​.cloud​front​.net/​s​o​p​a​/​i​m​g​/12 – 14-letter.pdf
See also: http://​amer​i​can​cen​sor​ship​.org/ and http://​enginead​vo​ca​cy​.org/

Embed­ded Link

http://​dq99alanzv66m​.cloud​front​.net/​s​o​p​a​/​i​m​g​/12 – 14-letter.pdf