Last year, when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) proposed a bill creating an Internet blacklist of sites Americans weren't allowed to visit (The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act), over 300,000 people signed Demand Progress's petition against the bill. After Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) called it a "bunker-buster cluster bomb" aimed at the Internet, the bill was dropped.
Until now. The new PROTECT-IP Act that Leahy recently proposed retains the censorship components from before, but under the new bill, it is also prohibited to "refer or link" to a blacklisted site; doing so would result in a blacklist order to stop.
More than 50,000 Demand Progress members have already signed our petition opposing the bill. Click to join now:
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/protectip_docs/?source=undergroundIn February, Bryan McCarthy became the first American to be arrested for linking to other sites through his website,ChannelSurfing.net, now blocked by the Department of Homeland Security. He's still awaiting trial despite public outrage.
Under the new blacklist bill, the paragraph immediately above would be illegal. It's akin to the PATRIOT Act gag orders that make it illegal to talk about receiving a PATRIOT Act request (which turned out to let the government cover up thousands of illegal requests). Without the ability to talk about government power, there's no way for citizens to ensure this power isn't being misused.
This Internet censorship bill was undemocratic to begin with -- saying that Americans can't visit the same websites as Mexicans or Canadians makes a mockery of the First Amendment, but this new bill is just insane. Leahy had gone too far this time and it's up to us to stop him. You can click here to express your opposition.
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/protectip_docs/?source=underground
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