OpenNeo

The internet as we know it is under attack. Today, November 16, Congress is holding hearings on the first American Internet censorship bill, which would give the American government and the entertainment industry unprecedented power. This includes the power to block websites for infringing content posted by its users, even if the site didn’t know about it. The bill also makes it a felony with a five-year jail sentence to stream copyrighted content, even in an entirely noncommercial context, such as singing a pop song on Facebook.

We already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which gives the entertainment industry the power to demand that websites remove infringing content. The DMCA is what makes it possible for us to have free expression on sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms that allow us to both organize protests and live our daily lives. This bill would make it legally unfeasible to run websites with user-generated content, and could quite possibly spell the end of the Internet as we know it.

This bill is real and could pass this month. Don’t let the government throw the Internet into chaos with a Great Firewall of America. Stand up for a free society.

See AmericanCensorship.org for more information. And, please, don’t let this happen to the Internet we know and love. It’s the most powerful tool we have to express ourselves in the modern world, and such threats to our freedom are unacceptable.

Thanks for reading.
—Matchu