SOPA and PIPA Incites Letter To Congress from 75 Internet Brands
The backlash against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act isn't quite over. A coalition of 75 Internet advocacy groups -- including Reddit, Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, NY Tech Meetup and O'Reilly Media -- sent an open letter to Congress asking it to put intellectual property lawmaking on hold.
After highlighting the recent Internet blackout as the largest online protest in American history, the group writes:
Now is the time for Congress to take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a fresh perspective. A wide variety of important concerns have been expressed including views from technologists, law professors, international human rights groups, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and above all, individual Internet users. The concerns are too fundamental and too numerous to be fully addressed through hasty revisions to these bills. Nor can they be addressed by closed door negotiations among a small set of inside the-beltway stakeholders.
The letter accuses Congress of privileging select groups, such as the MPAA and RIAA, that have placed a significant amount of effort in pushing laws such as PIPA and SOPA to the forefront of the conversation in Congress.
The signed letter concludes with the following:
The Internet's value to the public makes it necessary that any legislative debate in this area be open, transparent, and sufficiently deliberative to allow the full range of interested parties to offer input and to evaluate specific proposals. To avoid doing so would be to repeat the mistakes of SOPA and PIPA.
To see the full letter, click here.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.