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Companies, organizations in defense of free software and individuals mobilize against the draft law presented in the US Congress that provides for the possibility of lock pages around the world (without a court order) with the excuse of defending the copyright. |
The last to join has been Creative Commons. But the list of organizations and companies that have expressed their rejection of the application of the Stopping Online Piracy Act (SOPA) already has Internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Mozilla and Ebay.
SOPA is the draft law with which the North American Government intends to block access to any web page that violates copyright. In addition, it would force Internet access providers (who offer us an Internet connection) and search engines to monitor the content they offer. Its application would imply that all those pages created to share music and movies were not accessible to US users, including those that have been created in other countries.
In addition, as Creative Commons, an organization that has promoted alternatives to classic copyright, warns, SOPA could endanger the existence of community web pages such as Wikileaks, Wikipedia, Flickr or Youtube: “While the standard of public licenses has reduced costs and risks of shared use and legal collaboration, SOPA will dramatically increase both the costs and the risks of creating platforms for exchange and collaboration, ”they say in a statement.
Faced with its defenders who claim that it is an application of the law to protect job creation in the audiovisual and computer industry, dozens of companies have sent letters of protest to congressmen who will have to vote on the measure. "With SOPA, the United States tries to dominate a shared resource globally" reads a letter signed by the Free Software Foundation (the creators of the GNU operating system), La Quadrature du Net and Acces, among others. Highlighting the repercussions that it could have at a global level even in the defense of human rights, they denounce that, by affecting the Law to services that protect the identity of browsers (Tor among them), the security of those who use the Internet would be put at risk in those regimes that pursue freedom of expression.
Hence, institutionalizing a tool for censorship on the internal web "would create a paradox that undermines the moral authority of the United States to criticize repressive regimes," the signatories of the letter explain.
Another letter was sent by Google, Twitter, and other major companies and web providers denouncing the serious invasion of their customers' privacy that would result from monitoring their activity. The website AVAAZ.org has published an online petition urging the Obama administration to defend "a free and open internet (...) a fundamental pillar of democracies around the world." The electronic petition, which has already garnered 471.800 signatures, will be delivered to members of the United States Congress before the vote.