Supporters: Public Knowledge | EFF | Free Software Foundation | Mozilla | Demand Progress | Fight For the Future | PPF | Creative Commons | Wikimedia

Today, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system.

This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same.

Join all of us to stop this bill.

Website Blocking

The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn't be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

How you can help

We got congress to drop censorship once, but they’ll almost surely bring it back when the public’s attention is on something else. Sign up to flood Congress with emails and phonecalls if SOPA returns:

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Do you have a website, blog or Tumblr? Join us to stop this law!

Be a part of American Censorship Day

  1. Grab the code below to 'censor' your website or logo.

  2. Tell us that your site is participating:


    Tweet #sitecensored #blacklist with url of your site and we'll display it.


  3. On midnight November 16, post the code to your site.

Code to 'censor' your site's logo

Simply include this image link code in the html for your site. A black censored bar will appear. Use the absolute positioning parameters to place the bar over your logo. Use width and height parameters to fit it to your site. That's it! You can also modify our image yourself if you prefer, and link to the same URL that appears in the code above.

Code to ask your visitors to contact Congress

Paste this code into your site, and your users will receive a message to contact Congress.

"Censor" your own logo for this day of action

This 'stop censorship' message leads to a page where users will contact their congressional representatives. Here's how it looks:

Censorship logo example Try it out Censorship logo example

This Bill is an Emergency for the Internet

  1. Watch and then share this video

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    Download in the WebM format

  2. Read what the experts have to say in the quotes below

  3. Read these articles

  4. Check out the Infographic:

PARTICIPATING SITES

Reddit

MetaFilter

4chan

Mozilla

Public Knowledge

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Free Software Foundation

Free Press

Wikimedia Foundation

PPF (Open Congress)

Torrentfreak

Boing Boing

Creative Commons

Grooveshark

Demand Progress

Hype Machine

Techdirt

Irregular Times

Engine Advocacy

Center for Democracy and Technology

Fight for the Future

Full list coming soon...


REACTIONS TO THIS BILL, "SOPA" H.R.3261

"These bills were written by the content industry without any input from the technology industry. And they are trying to fast track them through congress and into law without any negotiation with the technology industry."

- Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures)

"SOPA, regrettably, represents a big step backward in Washington's efforts to support the digital revolution, one of the only sectors of the economy that continues to grow."

- Larry Downes (TechFreedom)

"[SOPA would] overturn the long-accepted principles and practices [of the DMCA] in favor of a one-sided enforcement mechanism that is far more broad than existing law while not attempting to protect the rights of anyone accused of copyright infringement."

- Gigi B. Sohn (President of Public Knowledge)

"It contains provisions that will chill innovation. It contains provisions that will tinker with the fundamental fabric of the internet. It gives private corporations the power to censor. And best of all, it bypasses due legal process to do much of it."

- James Allworth (Harvard Business School)

"The main "enforcement" mechanism in these bills is to put liability on third party service providers coming from the tech industry, undermining the safe harbors of the DMCA and the legal framework that has allowed tons of important internet platforms to evolve."

- Mike Masnick (TechDirt)

"This is a move that threatens, rather than protects, property rights, and also threatens America's Internet and tech leadership."

- Neil Stevens (RedState.com)

Press contact: [email protected] or (508) 474-5248

American Censorship Day organized by:

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