Senators Wyden, Cantwell ready to stand up to protect the Internet from censorship bills

In a mat­ter of days, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate may be vot­ing on an extreme­ly dan­ger­ous bill backed by the enter­tain­ment indus­try that would allow pow­er­ful media con­glom­er­ates and oth­er big cor­po­ra­tions to cen­sor the Inter­net at will.

This bill, S. 968, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about, is offi­cial­ly known as the Pre­vent­ing Real Online Threats to Eco­nom­ic Cre­ativ­i­ty and Theft of Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Act of 2011 — PROTECT IP, or PIPA, for short.

Osten­si­bly, S. 698 is intend­ed to pro­tect “intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty”, as the title sug­gests. Exec­u­tives at Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, pub­lish­ing hous­es, and record com­pa­nies have long want­ed to “cableize” the Inter­net, because it would give them con­trol over the medi­um. They want to be able to decide when and how every­one timeshifts or spaceshifts con­tent, and to what extent (if any) con­tent may be shared with others.

(Timeshift­ing refers to the prac­tice of record­ing pro­gram­ming for use lat­er, or play­ing and read­ing on demand. Spaceshift­ing refers to the prac­tice of mak­ing dig­i­tal copies of con­tent — for instance, rip­ping a com­pact disc and putting the result­ing MP3 or Vor­bis tracks on one’s portable music player).

If big media gets their way and the Inter­net gets cableized, it will cease to exist as we know it today. Net neu­tral­i­ty will be a thing of the past. Cen­sor­ship will replace free­dom of expres­sion. Inno­va­tion will be stifled.

And net­roots-pow­ered orga­ni­za­tions like NPI, which use the Inter­net to orga­nize and mobi­lize for change, will no longer be able to exist.

This leg­is­la­tion is a grave threat to the Inter­net. It absolute­ly must be stopped.

That is why we’re so thank­ful that two coura­geous U.S. Sen­a­tors from the great Pacif­ic North­west — Ron Wyden of Ore­gon and Maria Cantwell of Wash­ing­ton — have stepped up to lead the fight against it.

Ron Wyden has pledged to lead a fil­i­buster against the leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate if it reach­es the floor in Decem­ber — as we expect it to. (It’s already made it through the Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee). Wyden is pre­pared to go to the mat to defend the Inter­net, and three oth­er sen­a­tors have agreed to stand with him: Maria Cantwell of Wash­ing­ton, Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, and Jer­ry Moran of Kansas.

On Novem­ber 17th, the four sen­a­tors wrote to Har­ry Reid and Mitch McConnell, out­lin­ing their objec­tions to S.698. They wrote:

Our fear, which is shared by many, is that S. 968 as cur­rent­ly writ­ten will have the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of under­min­ing our nation’s nation­al secu­ri­ty and our goals to encour­age inno­va­tion, entre­pre­neur­ship, and job creation.

As cur­rent­ly writ­ten, the Pro­tect IP Act and the com­pan­ion Stop Online Pira­cy Act leg­is­la­tion in the House unnec­es­sar­i­ly risk an over­broad appli­ca­tion of the new and unprece­dent­ed tools they pro­vide to the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice and the pri­vate sec­tor. An exces­sive­ly expan­sion­ary appli­ca­tion of these tools would under­mine our nation­al secu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic interests.

We are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned that the pro­pos­al autho­rizes the use of reme­dies that will under­mine the infra­struc­ture of the Inter­net. The nation’s lead­ing tech­nol­o­gists and secu­ri­ty experts say these pro­vi­sions will kill our best hope for actu­al­ly mak­ing the Inter­net more secure against cyber attacks. We take seri­ous­ly the alarm expressed by the nation’s lead­ing investors in new online star­tups who say the pro­pos­al will damp­en inter­est in financ­ing the new ideas and busi­ness­es of tomor­row, and to legal and human rights experts who cau­tion that the pro­pos­al enables the silenc­ing of speech.

We thank each of these sen­a­tors for sign­ing their names to this let­ter and pledg­ing to defend the Inter­net — the most demo­c­ra­t­ic, rev­o­lu­tion­ary medi­um for com­mu­ni­ca­tion ever invented.

An unprece­dent­ed coali­tion, to which NPI belongs, has come togeth­er to fight S. 698 and its equal­ly dis­as­trous com­pan­ion, the “Stop Online Pira­cy Act”, which would user in an age of cen­sor­ship, where our nation’s law enforce­ment agen­cies (which already have over­ly broad sur­veil­lance and police pow­ers) would become hench­men of big media con­glom­er­ates like News Cor­po­ra­tion, Time Warn­er, Sony, The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny, and Viacom.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, the coali­tion orga­nized Amer­i­can Cen­sor­ship Day, which NPI par­tic­i­pat­ed in, to raise aware­ness of these destruc­tive bills. Thanks to Amer­i­can Cen­sor­ship Day, many more peo­ple are now aware of this threat to the Inter­net. But our work is far from fin­ished. We need to build oppo­si­tion to this bill in both hous­es of Con­gress — espe­cial­ly the Senate.

If ever there was a bill that deserved to die by fil­i­buster, this would be it.

Please take a few moments this week to call your rep­re­sen­ta­tive and sen­a­tors and let them know you oppose these bills. At StopCensorship.org, you can add your own name to the list of names opposed to the bill. Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden plans to read this list into the con­gres­sion­al record dur­ing the fil­i­buster against the bill, instead of read­ing out of a phone book or a novel.

Join us in mak­ing your oppo­si­tion to these job-killing, inno­va­tion-sti­fling, free speech-wreck­ing bills loud­ly known.