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| Mozilla Firefox |
Putting up the fight, Mozilla posted a copy of the "joint letter" sent to Congress from several websites:
Here’s a copy of our letter to Congressional leaders:
Dear Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Grassley, Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Conyers:
The undersigned Internet and technology companies write to express our concern with legislative measures that have been introduced in the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, S. 968 (the “PROTECT IP Act”) and H.R. 3261 (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”).
We support the bills’ stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign “rogue” websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites. We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity. We cannot support these bills as written and ask that you consider more targeted ways to combat foreign “rogue” websites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting, while preserving the innovation and dynamism that has made the internet such an important driver of economic growth and job creation.
One issue merits special attention. We are very concerned that the bills as written would seriously undermine the effective mechanism Congress enacted in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to provide a safe harbor for internet companies that act in good faith to remove infringing content from their sites. Since their enactment in 1998, the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions for online service providers have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry’s growth and success. While we work together to find additional ways to target foreign rogue sites, we should not jeopardize a foundational structure that has worked for content owners and Internet companies alike and provides certainty to innovators with new ideas for how people create, find, discuss, and share information lawfully online.
We are proud to be part of an industry that has been crucial to U.S. economic growth and job creation. A recent McKinsey Global Institute Report found that the Internet accounts for 3.4 percent of GDP in the 13 countries that they studied, and, in the U.S., the Internet’s contribution to GDP is even larger. If Internet consumption and expenditure were a sector, its contribution to GDP would be bigger than energy, agriculture, communication, mining, or utilities. In addition, the Internet industry has increased productivity for small and medium-sized businesses by 10%. We urge you not to risk either this success or the tremendous benefits these new platforms have brought to hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.
We stand ready to work with the Congress to develop targeted solutions to addressing the problem of foreign rogue websites.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
Sincerely,
AOL
eBay
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
Mozilla
Twitter
Yahoo!
Zynga
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| Google |
"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and Web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," said a Google spokeswoman Tuesday. "So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page."
The Google logo was blacked-out but the site remained open to the public.
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| Wikipedia |
Why not Facebook & Twitter?
"The Internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on his profile page. "We can't let poorly thought-out laws get in the way of the Internet's development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the Internet." Despite his disapproval of SOPA and PIPA, Zuckerberg chose not to shut down access to his site on Wednesday. Honestly, I don't blame him. If Facebook or Google completely shut down their websites for 24 hours, I would go insane.
Twitter, on the other hand, I think we all would've been fine without. But the two major social networking sites explained how "Facebook joined with Google, Twitter, eBay, AOL, Yahoo and LinkedIn in sending a joint letter to Congress opposing the SOPA 2012 bill." So if you ask me, they played their role. But CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo sure got an ear full....or should I say eye full?
Here are some more sites that censored its content:
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| Wired.com |
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| Wordpress.com |
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| Reddit.com |
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| boingboing.net |
