Begin forwarded message: > From: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx> > Subject: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship > Date: December 14, 2011 4:12:20 GMT+02:00 > To: ip <ip@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Reply-To: <dave@xxxxxxxxxx> > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Peter Eckersley > Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 > Subject: EFF call for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship > To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx> > > > (For the IP list) > > Last year, EFF organized an open letter against Internet censorship > legislation being considered by the US Senate > (https://eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/open-letter). Along with other activists > efforts, we successfully delayed that proposal, but need to update the > letter > for two bills, SOPA and PIPA, that are close to passing through US Congress > now. > > If you would like to sign, please email me at pde@xxxxxxx, with a one-line > summary of what part of the Internet you helped to helped to design, > implement, debug or run. > > We need signatures by 8am GMT on Thursday (midnight Wednesday US Pacific, > 3am > US Eastern). Also feel free to forward this to colleagues who played a role > in designing and building the network. > > The updated letter's text is below: > > We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called > the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards > and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. > We're just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our > project, the Internet, has brought with it. > > Last year, many of us wrote to you and your colleagues to warn about the > proposed "COICA" copyright and censorship legislation. Today, we are > writing again to reiterate our concerns about the SOPA and PIPA derivatives > of last year's bill, that are under consideration in the House and Senate. > In many respects, these proposals are worse than the one we were alarmed to > read last year. > > If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous > fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the > credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet > infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will > risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS) and have > other capricious technical consequences. In exchange for this, such > legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be > circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties' > right and ability to communicate and express themselves online. > > All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended > to restrict, but these bills are particularly egregious in that regard > because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just > infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, > law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals. In fact, it > seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE > seizures program. > > Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors > and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries > that > censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. > It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the > DNS, > proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and > insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will > affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government. > > The current bills -- SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly -- also threaten > engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily > and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government. > When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were > reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or > control. > We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance > as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage > the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power > over what their citizens can read and publish. > > The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open > Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open > Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political > concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the > leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly > uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a > neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its > central in the network for censorship that advances its political and > economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive. > > Senators, Congressmen, we believe the Internet is too important and too > valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put these bills > aside. > > -- > Peter Eckersley pde@xxxxxxx > Technology Projects Director Tel +1 415 436 9333 x131 > Electronic Frontier Foundation Fax +1 415 436 9993 > > > > ------------------------------------------- > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/5548937-080cdcbf > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=5548937&id_secret=5548937-3cd253d4 > Unsubscribe Now: https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=5548937&id_secret=5548937-f6d5c528&post_id=20111213211226:0F7FF330-25F9-11E1-8AE5-A1E1AF24D298 > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Mobile number during December: +358 46 5215582 Mobile number starting January: +49 151 12055791
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