Stop SOPA: Don’t Let Big Brother Blacklist the Free Press

The Stop Online Piracy Act ( SOPA) if passed would create a “legal” tool for censoring websites. Just like others coercive and repressive legislation such as the Patriot Act and more recently the NDAA, it contains vague provisions, open to interpretations, which could be used to silence dissent, free speech and the freedom of the press.

Also SOPA’s justification is to block mainly foreign websites providing illegal content, the vaguely defined provisions of the bill would allow the removal of content including political and other speech from the Internet, which are, in principle, protected by the US constitution as freedom of speech. SOPA would allow the Attorney General to create a blacklist to censor sites even if no court has found any infringement of copyright or any other law.

“If we let that happen, that would mean they would be barring access to content that is protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. And who knows how far the censorship would go after that. We can’t let that stand. This is a matter of protecting everyone’s constitutional right to freedom of speech. The bill as it stands now infringes on our constitutional rights,” said ACLU’s Executive Director Anthony Romero. The ACLU is adamantly opposed to the SOPA bill, and on November 16, 2011 the organization submitted a detailed statement to Congress.

If you don’t want to be left in the dark, and live in a neo-fascist Orwellian society which curtails civil liberties, free speech and the freedom of the press take ACTION NOW to stop SOPA or it might be too late.