http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/10/01/the-internet-filter-coming-to-the-us-with-barely-any-dissent/
The US Congress spent yesterday packing up and heading home for mid-term re-election campaigns, having failed its most important jobâââpassing the annual budget.ÂBut even this deadlocked Congress is capable of doing what the Australian Labor Party cannotâââpass a mandatory ISP-based Internet filterâââand do so before the end of the year.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi will recall the current congress for a special lame-duck session later this year before newly elected representatives are sworn in, to pass last-minute reforms in case the Democrats lose power, as widely predicted in the polls.ÂAmong those reforms include a low-profile copyright proposal with bipartisan, almost unanimous support that just so happens to include censoring whole websites included on a government-run blacklist.
TheÂCombating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act(COICA) will blacklist sites that are âdedicated to infringing activitiesâ regardless of where the site is hosted, with exceptions for commercially-oriented sites but not political speech. Originally planned as two blacklists, one controlled by the courts and one by the US Attorney General, the latter was dropped from the bill yesterday after ISPs raised early complaints.
Aaron Swartz from Progressive Change and Australian Peter Eckersley from Electronic Frontier Foundation began aÂpetition campaignÂthis week to fight the bill atÂdemandprogress.org, garnering 100,000 signatures in two days.Â
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/10/01/the-internet-filter-coming-to-the-us-with-barely-any-dissent/
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