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Mozilla Urges The Internet To Continue Copyright Fight

Posted by: , 17:29 AEDT, Wed November 30, 2011
Tags: Copyright

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Mozilla asks Internet users to oppose the Senate's PROTECT IP Act by calling senators next Tuesday

Mozilla is asking Internet users to continue fighting against tougher copyright laws which could "jeopardize the basic structure of the internet as we know it". Having being a big supporter of the American Censorship Day, a viral event to protest against the House's proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which resulted in more than a million protest emails and thousands of phone calls to Congress, Mozilla is asking the Internet again to propose the Senate's version of SOPA, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

Like SOPA, PIPA aims to change the fundamental structure of the Internet by allowing the government, based on mere speculation of piracy activity, to censor entire websites by altering the domain name system - an act that critics have warned could destabilise the structure of the Internet, and increase cybersecurity threats.

A vote on PIPA was delayed in the Senate last year by a hold placed on Senator Wyden, the senior senator from Oregon who is against PIPA. But the hold may soon be removed if, as expected, 60 senators vote to remove it, and while Senator Wyden has threatened to filibuster the vote, Mozilla is asking Internet users for more help.

Mozilla wants people who are against the meddling of the Internet by policitians and special interest groups that don't have the Internet's interests at heart, and along with organizers of the first protest event, AmericanCensorship.org, is asking users to call their senators and tell them to leave the Internet alone. Mozilla is also hoping users would call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid next Tuesday, to ask him personally to vote against PIPA in its current form.

Earlier in the month, a report compiled by Sandia National Laboratories said the proposed DNS filtering by PIPA and SOPA would "unlikely to be effective" and also reiterated the threat to cybersecurity. Sandia is a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin and a national research and development for the U.S. Department of Energy.


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