© Unknown
The battle over free speech on the Internet has been uphill for those who are victimized by the US government and professional trolls.
The entertainment industry, namely the RIAA and MPAA have been at the frontlines, claiming copyright infringement as they have employed Internet providers as
spies to look for potential violators.
As
cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, SOPA and PIPA came together to create the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) which "effectively creates a 'cybersecurity' exemption to all existing laws".
This big brother legislation would have given the
power to the corporations to allege copyright infringement which would empower them to spy on users online activity, personal data, ISPs, search engines, social networks, text messages, phone calls, emails and all other digital correspondence.
CISPA
inspired protests across the nation while over
3 million corporations in the domestic US supported the bill.
Just last month, the Department of Homeland Security was central in the taking of domain names for websites without due process or explanation - simply using the blanket claim of copyright infringement.
US Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano received
correspondence from several members of the House of Representatives who were in protest of the domain name seizures, citing that the copyright claims were questionable and that the websites were clearly being censored for alternative reasons.
The letter stated that:
Our concern centers on your Department's methods, and the process given, when seizing the domain names of websites whose actions and content are presumed to be lawful, protected speech.
Fraudulent claims of copyright infringement are rampant across the Internet. During the Hugo Awards, the Ustream video of the show was
censored by a digital restriction management (DRM) robot that shut down the broadcast of the Hugo Awards due to "copyright infringement" of material displayed during the show. The DRM robot was "incorrectly programmed" to interpret the show as a violation of copyright and disrupted the broadcast.
Comment: "..AQAP, which has planned attacks on international targets including airliners and is described by Washington as the most dangerous wing of al-Qaida."
Lots of evidence, wouldn't you say the evidence here is enough?
The following will hopefully add some perspective: