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Title: Stop Internet Censorship
Source:
[None]
URL Source: http://original.antiwar.com/paul/20 ... 1/23/stop-internet-censorship/
Published: Jan 24, 2012
Author: Ron Paul
Post Date: 2012-01-24 06:26:01 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 66
Comments: 1
Listen to Rep. Ron Paul deliver this address. Although Congress was back in session for scarcely more than a day last week, private citizens across the country managed to cause an uproar felt across Capitol Hill. The uproar took the form of hundreds of thousands of phone calls to both senators and representatives, urging them to oppose two draconian new bills that threaten the free and unbridled flow of information on the Internet. On Wednesday last week, dozens of prominent websites like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Craigslist were blacked out in protest of two bills known in D.C. jargon as SOPA and PIPA. SOPA is the House bill; PIPA is its Senate companion. These bills ostensibly will combat Internet piracy, and of course we also are told they will help us wage the never-ending “war on terror.” What these bills actually do is force website owners to police the Internet; create entry barriers to the only relatively free and open medium of communication; and threaten to break the technological structure of the Internet itself. They also violate our 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and our 4th Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. SOPA and PIPA have been drafted not only without respect for the Constitution, but also without an understanding of the how the Internet works. These bills attack the very system upon which the entire orderly organization of the Web depends. Search engines, Internet service providers, advertising sites, and sites with user-generated content such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter — all magnificent creations of the market — are directly threatened by these bills. They will be held responsible if even a single one of their millions of users posts even one link to a website that a copyright holder claims is violating a copyright. Note that under the bills as written, the Department of Justice or a copyright holder does not have to prove that a copyright was violated — they simply have to claim copyright infringement and an entire site is shut down. The burden of these regulations on the Internet will be enormous, shifting resources away from productivity and innovation and into monitoring and censoring. It turns Internet companies into involuntary tools for Big Brother government, further eroding our constitutional rights. As is typical of so many bills in Congress, SOPA and PIPA were not crafted to make life better for the American people but rather were written at the behest of big business trying to enlist the federal government as its strong arm. For example, the Motion Picture Association of America spent more than $1.2 million so far lobbying for passage. But the Internet community is fighting back effectively, not just with websites that went black but with millions of users who expressed their solidarity. Congressional sponsors of both bills have been jumping ship in response to the outrage. The House Judiciary Committee canceled the SOPA hearing they were planning to hold last Wednesday; the House leadership announced they have no intention of considering this bill; and at the end of the week Sen. Harry Reid announced he was postponing the vote until a “compromise” could be reached. The American people are speaking, and with their continued grassroots efforts the marketplace for free ideas and communication will prevail over government controls and censorship.
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#1. To: Ada (#0)
I think this is actually an area we could make a deal with the copyright holders to enhance the Public Domain. What I would propose is to give the copyright holders an Internet policing against GENUINE Online Piracy law (though not as unconstitutional and rediculous as PIPA and SOPA) in return for the copyright holders removing their unprofitable and "obsolete" but culturally and historically important Abandonware and other out of print or market distribution but still under copyright materials from copyright and putting them in the Public Domain on a yearly basis. (As a forinstance in the software world Windows 3x and 9x and their associated softwares are unprofitable and "obsolete" for Microsoft now but they are also important parts of computer history that would best be preserved by Public Domain distribution so someone can always get a hold of them and make emulation for them on any type of hardware that may come up in the future. The same could also be said for many of the movies, teleseries, comic books, cartoon shorts, books, music and other materials that are unprofitable and "obsolete" for their current copyright holders but are parts of history and culture within their respective media that are also best preserved through Public Domain distribution.) I'm of the view that If we really want the copyright holders to give us something (that being a return to a growing *Constitutional Public Domain and the end of Permanent Copyright) then we should give them something in return (that being stronger protection from Online or other Piracy of their current copyrighted works that many, even in our middle class depend on for a living.) I am of the view that Online Piracy OF CURRENT WORKS is stealing because you are taking a product that is made and supported not just by the CEOs of a large Corporation like Disney or Microsoft but also by the many middle class coders, cameramen, studio personel, janators, small buisnessmen that distribute legal licensed DVDs and CDs, etc. However I believe unlike others that believe that copyright piracy is actually stealing that the copyright holders are ALSO STEALING when they take "obsolete" and unprofitable works that are also culturally or historically important artifacts out of circulation using their copyrights to do so rather than donating them to the *Constitutional Public Domain. Therefore the best solution to the Problem of Online Piracy and unconstitutional Permanent Copyright is one that tries to put some control on BOTH kinds of theft. * I call the Public Domain the CONSTITUTIONAL Public Domain in this reply because copyright expiration and therefore the Public Domain is MANDATED in the Constitution through the use of the term LIMITED TERMS in the Constitutional clause allowing the Congress to grant copyrights and patents. 
The FARO RESERVE BANK!!! 
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