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Forum Post: SOPA Is “Unconstitutional”, Would “Criminalize” the Internet … Modeled On China

Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 13, 2011, 5:18 p.m. EST by theaveng (602)
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QUOTE: "Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe... wrote a letter to Congress last week stating that SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is unconstitutional. Tribe argues the bill amounts to illegal “prior restraint” because it would suppress speech without a judicial hearing. “Conceivably, an entire website containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement,” Tribe writes. “Such an approach would create severe practical problems for sites with substantial user-generated content, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and for blogs that allow users to post videos, photos, and other materials.”

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the bill would “criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself.”..... He compared the proposal to the Web censorship practiced by repressive foreign governments like China. Indeed the bill appears to be modeled on that country after former Democrat Senator Chris Dodd [the same guy who killed any chance of financial reform], now the head of the MPAA, last week explained to Variety that the lobby is only asking for the same kind of power to censor the Internet:

“When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites.” Even in China they are calling SOPA the “Great Firewall of America.” Given that Democrat Joe Lieberman said that America needs an internet kill switch like China, I guess that the bill’s Chinese-style censorship is not entirely surprising.

ARTICLE - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/sopa-is-unconstitutional-would-criminalize-the-internet-china-is-the-model.html

3 Comments

3 Comments


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[-] 2 points by Windsofchange (1044) 12 years ago

Oh, joy, look more fascist bills. Don't forget that there is a similar bill in the Senate known as The Protect IP ACT. Yes, they want this copyright infringement bs to pass so badly that they had a similar bill put in both the house and the senate.

I call this bill fascist, but yes it has been modeled after China's great firewall. Is this what our country has become that we embrace such a draconian piece of legislation? For shame!

[-] 1 points by BLUTODOG (111) 12 years ago

They want the Internet to be like a shopping mall...PERIOD. They want to be able to very carefully manage all other speech there. These bills are the beginning of the end of the Internet as we've all known it. The days of the Internet wild west will soon be over. They intend to fence the Internet in and watch to make sure the cattle ( us) don't stray far from the Corp. approved crap there.

[-] 0 points by theaveng (602) 12 years ago

Earlier I heard someone say the Democrats are not fascist like the GOP.

Riiiiight.

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