MESSAGE
| DATE | 2011-12-15 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Ip Wars
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/sopa-heads-to-a-vote-even-journalists-want-to-stop-it/2011/12/14/gIQAjDAduO_blog.html
SOPA denounced by newspaper journalists, too
By Elizabeth Flock
As the Stop Online Piracy Act heads to a vote in the House Judiciary
Committee tomorrow morning, its opponents are lining up to stop it. The
bill’s newest foe? Journalists.
People who work on the Internet launched a visual petition to stop SOPA.
Journalists are among their ranks. ( I Work for the Internet ) First
came the critiques of civil liberties and human rights groups. Then came
the slams from Internet engineers and Web giants, including Facebook,
Twitter, and Google. Wednesday, the American Newspaper Editors
Association (ASNE) piled on by sending Congress a letter to ask that it
stop the bill.
If passed, SOPA would expand the ability of law enforcement and
copyright holders to shut down any site that hosts pirated content. But
as the American Censorship group voiced on the blog Boing Boing on
Wednesday, many believe “SOPA would not only hurt free speech, it
will choke off the Internet workforce and its readers by taking down
entire Web sites.â€
Yesterday, the Post’s Maura Judkis reported that a group of people
who work on the Internet launched a visual petition so Congress could
see the faces of those who would be hurt by SOPA. Journalists are among
their ranks.
Last month, Jennifer Martinez of Politico wrote that SOPA will be a
“shootout at the digital corral,†between lobbyists in the
entertainment industry and Internet giants. She can now add journalists
to that list. From ASNE’s letter to Congress:
Our members use the Internet in ways that could be construed to
violate SOPA, and that’s not acceptable. Whether utilizing content
contributed by third parties, stepping outside the direct
reporter-source interaction to acquire and use information from Web
sites around the world, or augmenting our stories through the use of
multimedia previously unavailable to print-only publications, ASNE
members continue to change the way news is presented. We fear that SOPA
will restrict our ability to engage in these activities and stifle our
capacity to innovate when we most sorely need the freedom to do so.
ASNE is not specific about what it is worried SOPA would consider
copyright infringement on a news site.
But BlogPost can take a guess. Bloggers at the Post every day use
content from Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, among other third-party
social Web sites. We often aggregate information from other news sites
and augment it with our own. And how we report is changing every day.
Would all of that work be threatened by SOPA? ASNE seems to think so.
Dan Gillmor, a professor of digital media entreÂpreÂneurÂship at
Arizona State University, shared the ASNE letter on his Google+ page
Wednesday, writing: “Finally, journalists see the threat from SOPA
and . . . this runaway train.â€
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