Tomorrow the Senate’s House Judiciary Committee will vote on the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA).
By now most readers will probably be aware that the bill introduces a wide variety of new tools that the authorities and copyright holders can use to take down “rogue sites.”
But in its current form SOPA goes even further.
The bill would “criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself,” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said earlier this week.
“Their goal is reasonable, their mechanism is terrible. They should not criminalize the intermediaries. They should go after the people that are violating the law,” he added.
And indeed, with the current vague language of SOPA not just the traditional piracy havens are at risk, but also search engines and even news sites or blogs that occasionally link to so called “rogue sites.”
Something to think about.
