[Chapter-delegates] Tomorrow Hearing on SOPA in U.S. House of Representatives

Thu Nov 17 06:28:41 PST 2011

Dear Carlos,

I am going tomorrow to the highest body in the country
(Governmental Council for Electronic Communications)  to
prepare comments on the new Slovenian Law on Electronic
Communications and I will present ISOC stand point.

Last time (a month ago)  when the Law  for criminal justice was on the
table we managed the article for punishing piracy on the Internet
and  the break of the intellectual rights to be removed.
The Parliament  removed the article from the Law.

So, we are all acting in the same direction. No fear, if ISOC
members are involved in the country legal process,  the legislation to
go to wrong direction. Of course political support is also important and
the timing to react.

With regards,

Borka

ISOC SI

Dne 17.11.2011 13:47, piše Carlos A. Afonso:
> Hi Dan,
>
> The APC people are endorsing the letter below, together with a growing
> number of NGOs and movements worldwide. I wonder if ISOC global and/or
> the chapters could do the same?
>
> fraternal regards
>
> --c.a.
>
> Carlos A. Afonso
> ISOC BR
>
> ========
> The Letter:
> Re: H.R.
>            3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act
>
> Dear Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Conyers,
>
> As press freedom and human rights advocates, we write to express our
> deep concern with H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). While
> this is a domestic bill, there are several provisions within SOPA that
> would have serious implications for international civil and human rights
> which raise concerns about how the United States is approaching global
> internet governance. The United States has long been a strong advocate
> for the protection and promotion of an open Internet. However, by
> institutionalizing the use of internet censorship tools to enforce
> domestic law in the United States creates a paradox that undermines its
> moral authority to criticize repressive regimes. We urge the United
> States to uphold its proclaimed responsibility as a leader in internet
> freedom and reject bills that will censor and fragment the web.
>
> Through SOPA, the United States is attempting to dominate a shared
> global resource. Building a nationwide firewall and creating barriers
> for international website and service operators makes a powerful
> statement that the United States is not interested in participating in a
> global information infrastructure.
> Instead, the United States would be creating the very barriers that
> restrict the free flow of information that it has vigorously challenged
> abroad. By imposing technical changes to the open internet while eroding
> due process, SOPA  introduces a deeply concerning degree of legal
> uncertainty into the internet economy, particularly for businesses and
> users internationally. Business cannot be conducted online when
> international users and businesses do not have faith that their access
> to payments, domain names, and advertising will be available, raising
> challenges to economic development and innovation.
>
> This is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if
> a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States.
>
> The provisions in SOPA on DNS filtering in particular will have severe
> consequences worldwide. In China, DNS filtering contributes to the Great
> Firewall that prevents citizens from accessing websites or services that
> have been censored by the Chinese government. By instituting this
> practice in the United States, SOPA sends an unequivocal message to
> other nations that it is acceptable to censor speech on the global
> Internet. Additionally, Internet engineers have argued in response to
> the Protect IP Act, DNS filtering would break the internet into separate
> regional networks. Worse still, the circumvention technology that can be
> used to access information under repressive Internet regimes would be
> outlawed under SOPA, the very same technology whose development is
> funded by the State Department.
>
> SOPA puts the interests of rightsholders ahead of the rights of society.
> SOPA would require that web services, in order to avoid complaints and
> lawsuits, take “deliberate actions” to prevent the possibility of
> infringement from taking place on their site, pressuring private
> companies to monitor the actions of innocent users. Not only will this
> effectively moot the safe harbor protection provided in the Digital
> Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but the proposed legislation would
> disproportionally affect small online communities who lack the capacity
> to represent their users in legal battles. Wrongly accused websites
> would suffer immediate losses as payment systems and ad networks would
> be required to comply with a demand to block or cease doing business
> with the site pending receipt of a legal counter-notice. Even then, it
> would still be at the discretion of these entities to reinstate service
> to the website regardless of the merits of an alleged rightsholder’s
> claim,  robbing online companies of a stable business environment and
> creating a climate where free speech is subject to the whims of private
> actors.
>
> Censoring the internet is the wrong approach to protecting any sectoral
> interest in business. By adopting SOPA, the United States would lose its
> position as a global leader in supporting a free and open Internet for
> public good.
>
> The international civil and human rights community urges Congress to
> reject the Stop Online Piracy Act.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Access
> Bits of Freedom (The Netherlands)
> Center for Internet and Society (India)
> Communication Is Your Right!
> Consumers International
> Digital Rights Ireland
> FGV (Brazil)
> Free Press
> May First/People Link
> MobileActive Corp
> Virtual Activism ...
>
>
>
> ========
>
> On 11/16/2011 03:26 PM, Dan York wrote:
>> Marcin,
>>
>>> What's ISOC position in this?
>>
>> I'm not on the public policy side of ISOC and therefore can't give an official "position" on SOPA, but I would note that in response earlier this year to the U.S. Senate version of the SOPA bill (called the "PROTECT-IP Act"), the Internet Society published this whitepaper outlining in very clear terms why the technique of DNS Filtering would not work and would be dangerous to the Internet infrastructure:
>>
>> http://www.isoc.org/internet/issues/dns-filtering.shtml
>>
>> (PDF download links are at the bottom of that page)
>>
>> As a U.S. citizen, I have personally emailed the PDF of that whitepaper to my senators and representatives along with my personal comments.  I have also been passing that link along through social networks so that people have some way to learn more about the technical issues behind the mechanisms proposed in SOPA and PROTECT-IP.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Dan
>>
>> --
>> Dan York
>> Senior Content Strategist, Internet Society
>> york at isoc.org   +1-802-735-1624
>> Jabber: york at jabber.isoc.org
>> Skype: danyork   http://twitter.com/danyork
>>
>> http://www.isoc.org/
>>
>> On Nov 15, 2011, at 3:03 PM, Marcin Cieslak wrote:
>>
>>> http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_11162011.html
>>>
>>> Witness List
>>> Maria Pallante
>>> Register of Copyrights
>>> U.S. Library of Congress
>>>
>>> John Clark
>>> Chief Security Officer and VP of Global Security
>>> Pfizer
>>>
>>> Michael O'Leary
>>> Senior Executive Vice President
>>> Global Policy and External Affairs
>>> MPAA
>>>
>>> Linda Kirkpatrick
>>> Group Head
>>> Customer Performance Integrity
>>> MasterCard
>>>
>>> Katherine Oyama
>>> Policy Counsel
>>> Google
>>>
>>> Paul Almeida
>>> President
>>> Dept. of Professional Employees
>>> AFL-CIO
>>>
>>> What's ISOC position in this?
>>> What does it take to be invited to a hearing?
>>>
>>> //Marcin
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Chapter-delegates mailing list
>>> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates
>>
>>
>>
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