Stop Online Piracy Act brought out the big guns against itself in United States Congressional hearings this week. As a member of the United States federal judiciary process, I am embarassed in front of my fellow attorneys in the international community and I apologize on behalf of the sane 99 percent of attorneys who do not represent major copyright holding conglomerates.
Mashable tells us that help is on the way, as follows. I quote their summary of this week’s SOPA opposition. Go for it, Jimmy, shut down Wikipedia.
A group of 83 prominent Internet engineers kicked things off on Thursday with a scathing open letter to Congress stating their opposition to both SOPA and its sister Senate bill PIPA.
“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,” they wrote.
A similar sentiment was echoed in a second open letter signed by the likes of Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey, Arianna Huffington and Marc Andreessen.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who signed the second letter, followed it up with a Google+ post that compares SOPA to censorship in China, Iran and pre-revolution Libya and Tunisia. Google has hired 15 lobbying firms to fight the bills, according to the New York Times.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales floated the idea of shutting down the site for American visitors in protest of the proposed laws.”
