The
U.S. joins China in censoring the Internet for the VOR
Voice of Russia
John Robles
The Senate
passed an act recently called the Protect IP Act but
then, just as quickly, a Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden,
put the bill on hold because as he said, it would
“muzzle speech and stifle innovation and economic
growth.”
The latest
piece of internet blacklist legislation, known as the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of
Representatives, was introduced by the House Judiciary
Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) who claims it is
for the purpose of shutting down foreign sites that post
intellectual property created by U.S. firms, goes even
further than the Protect IP Act.
The act would
allow the US Justice Department powers to punish and
shut down websites, both in the U.S. and anywhere in the
world and go after companies that provide support for
them, either technically or through payment systems
The US and the
West have long criticized China for stifling dissent and
for censorship but now they are not only joining China
but they are taking censorship even further and
attempting to censor the whole world.
The
international implications of SOPA are worrying for as
experts claim: it appears that the US is taking control
of the entire world. The definitions written in the bill
are so broad that any US user who uses a website
overseas immediately gives the US the power to
potentially take action against it and enable them to
force ISPs to DNS-block any foreign site.
On a global
scale it grants the U.S. Government far-reaching powers
to go after Web sites which it claims are hosting
copyrighted content. According to Public Knowledge a
group which promotes a free internet “SOPA is
significantly worse than its Senate cousin” because even
sites that are not directly responsible for their
content can be held liable and shut down, including
sites such as search engines.
Not long ago
the U.S. admitted that it was in a state of information
warfare and that it was losing the war. So what do you
do if you are losing the information war? You muzzle the
messenger.
SOPA is not
being rushed through to protect against copyright theft,
the US is scared, the Arab Spring has become the Western
Fall and the U.S. is going all out against those who
dare to question the official US Government line,
something that the internet inconveniently allows as the
people use the internet more and more to find out the
truth.
Record numbers
of people are turning away from the mainstream U.S.
controlled media and getting information from
independent news sources online that are reporting on
events.
You now hear
people in the everyday situations mentioning things that
only a few years ago were unknown outside of
"conspiracy" circles. For example the collapse of
building 7 on 9-11, the fact that the Republicans and
Democrats are essentially the same political party, as
are Labour and the Tories all choreographed for our
consumption to maintain the pretence of democracy. Most
people now know they have a government controlled by
bankers and that NATO is attempting to dominate the
world, we also know in advance that the West wants to
invade Iran and take control of the Arctic by force.
The SOPA Act
has been met with wide criticism and the list of those
opposing it is long and sounds like a who’s who of the
tech community. For starters Mozilla blacked out its
name on its home page in protest, as did the social news
site Reddit. The website Tumblr published a page against
the act, and internet giants like AOL, eBay, Facebook,
Google, Twitter and Zynga criticized Sopa by taking out
a full-page advertisement in The New York Times.
At present, if
Facebook, You Tube or other leading websites are found
to be illegally hosting copyrighted material they are
told to take it down. However the SOPA Act takes things
to the next level and would allow the U.S. Government to
block the website entirely.
Imagine if one
day, for example, you could not access Google because it
had been blocked for linking to an illegal mp3 file. In
a blog post Google said SOPA “…would threaten
innovation, jobs, and free expression”
In a collective
statement put out by internet giants they say that the
SOPA Act “…would encourage censorship, kill jobs and
give US authorities unrivalled powers over the world's
websites.” “We support the bills' stated goals –
providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign
'rogue' websites that are dedicated to copyright
infringement or counterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills
as drafted would expose law-abiding US internet and
technology companies to new and uncertain liabilities,
private rights of action, and technology mandates that
would require monitoring of websites," the firms wrote
in a public statement.
On Tuesday, ten
members of Congress signed a letter expressing concern
over the bill, including nine Democrats and one
Republican, Rep Ron Paul from Texas.
They write that
the SOPA Act is "overly broad and would cause serious
and long term damage to the technology industry, one of
the few bright spots in our economy." The
representatives say that passing the act would cause,
“…an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and
litigation."
Opponents say
the bills could basically destroy the internet and
destroy innovation by "using the same domain
blacklisting technologies pioneered by China and Iran".
An open letter
has also been sent to Congress and was co-signed by AOL,
eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter,
Yahoo! and Zynga, all of whom rarely agree on anything
else, which says a lot.
The freedom of
speech and expression and the uncontrolled dissemination
of information online is a serious problem for Western
political elites and the truth-spreading-culprits are
many: 9-11 truth sites, intelligence sites, anti-war
sites and foreign mass media sites like this one and
many others, sites such as the aforementioned and many
more, along with bloggers of every shape and form are
out there on the net, exposing things, getting at the
truth.
These truth
seekers are in the millions and are exposing things
like, torture, war crimes, political assassinations,
media manipulation, government lies and corruption, who
controls politicians, the fraudulent nature of the money
system, police brutality (and uncensored video evidence
to show it), eugenics, cover ups and the blacker
intelligence operations. And they are spreading all of
this information across the globe in seconds.
For the U.S.
the truth has become an inconvenience and a dangerous
threat to its power.