This morning, EFF’s staff and concerned netizens across the country tuned into the live webcast of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261). At least we tried to. Unfortunately, we were confronted with an incredibly poor webcast stream for much of the hearing. We find it ironic and deeply concerning that Congress is unable to successfully stream video of an event this important to all Internet users, even as they are debating a dangerous plan to change the Internet in fundamental ways and deputize Internet intermediaries to act like content police.Many of the online watchers took to Twitter to voice their concerns about being shut out of the hearing by the poor quality webcast. But the Internet community was shut out of the hearing in a more fundamental way: of the six witnesses called to testify on Congress’ plan to heavily regulate the Internet, there was only one representative of the technology sector. As Public Knowledge’s Martyn Griffen tweeted: “#SOPA Hearing internet still fading in and out. It’d be great if an internet engineer could fix the website issue in return for testifying.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/public-shut-out-stop-online-piracy-act-hearings-againAlso see:An Explosion of Opposition to the Internet Blacklist Bill
On the eve of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the Stop Internet Piracy Act — where five witnesses will appear in favor of the bill to just one against — a broad group of tech companies, lawmakers, experts, professors, and rights groups have come out against the bill.The statements, written by people from a variety of backgrounds and political persuasions, incorporate many of the same broad themes: SOPA will threaten perfectly legal websites, stifle innovation, kill jobs, and substantially disrupt the infrastructure of the Internet. Here is a small sample of what they had to say:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/explosion-opposition-internet-blacklist-bill
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