A Power Play in Congress – and How To Stop It by Karen Kwiatkowski

A wholly predictable big-government play for even more control over markets and technology, information and communication is moving through Congress.

That’s not news. It’s actually quite typical. After the nauseating passage of the National Defense Authorization Bill last month, with its Constitution-shattering military detention provisions for any American who falls out of the President’s favor, or who has crossed his minions, what might not be passed into law?

The Senate’s Protect IP Act, PIPA, and its House companion Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA, is now seeping through the congressional sewage system. This legislative pollution is purported to reduce global data piracy and illegal copying of digital content by regulating American ISPs and the Internet. Entertainment industry moguls and “too-big-to fail” content producers are demanding it, and it’s designed by paid-off, power-hungry establishment lawyers in Congress who don’t understand internet architecture, information technology, or the nature of the free market.

SOPA in particular is written by the fascist-leaning central controllers in Washington, who believe a better America will be one with an RFID chip in every creature, four legs and two, federal tracking of every person from birth to death, and exquisite knowledge of their every transaction, in real time. Lavrenti Beria and the East German Stasi chief Markus Wolf must be dreaming of reincarnation into such a totalitarian jewel – the United States in the 21st Century.

While containing some differences, these proposed laws, at heart, constitute simple rent-seeking by Hollywood and big music industry content producers. As Gary Shapiro writes in Forbes.com, while “sold as only attacking overseas “rogue” websites, the legislation expands federal government power, [PIPA and SOPA] encourages private litigation and threatens legitimate web sites like Google, YouTube and Facebook.”

Beyond the surface justification, only the most naive among us can deny that more federal regulation, more government monitoring, and more fearful Internet service providers and vendors all work to promote our D.C. master’s definition of “progress.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers an easy to understand explanation of SOPA – aka the “Internet Blacklist Bill,” and the dangers of its intended, and unintended, consequences. The reaction by the sleeping tiger of American small businesses, youth, techies, and advocates for free speech and the remnants of the Constitution indeed illustrates the Daily Bell’s concept of the Internet reformation…..

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via A Power Play in Congress – and How To Stop It by Karen Kwiatkowski.

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