Cited: MSNBC

Web sites around the world went dark for a day to protest anti-piracy bills being sponsored in the U.S. Congress and in the Senate. And with the blackout came thousands of calls to the lawmakers, emails, and protests outside of their offices, causing many of them to reconsider their support for this legislation. Among those that were supporters but not any longer are Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who by the way was also a co-sponsor of the legislation in the Senate, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Rep. Roy Blount, and a host of other policymakers that are now beginning to melt from the heat of the controversy started by their controversial laws.

Understating the obvious was Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who said that it was clear to many of those in Washington that they hadn’t completely understood the complexity of the issue and that there wasn’t any consensus on the proper course forward. The bill was first passed in the Senate Judiciary Committee and from that point until yesterday’s blackout by some of the most popular Web sites on the Web, Washington lawmakers have been hearing it from their constituents and

industry insiders, and from the owner of these sites, who have asked them to consider the ramifications of a set of laws that many of them had not read and not fully comprehended.

Of greatest concern to many of the owner of these Web sites is that these laws would give federal authorities the right to shut down Internet sites like Google and Facebook without due process, and in doing so completely alter the Internet as a platform for the free expression of ideas and information.

My take:

I’d bet that half of the lawmakers that signed the bill hadn’t even read it in the first place. Piracy on the Internet is a problem and does have to be dealt with but there has to be a limit to government power to close Web sites. It would almost be like giving the federal government the authority to shut down a newspaper, or radio station.

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