Senator Wyden’s going to be reading names of censorship opponents from the floor of the Senate during his expected filibuster of the PROTECT IP Act. You can ask to have your name read — and ask your Senators to vote no — by visiting StopCensorship.org.

The hope is that the uglier we make a prospective filibuster look, the less likely it becomes that leadership will call for a vote before Christmas break. It’s already passed through Senate Judiciary, and the understanding is that Reid wants to push for a vote soon, so he can claim a bi-partisan victory on a (bogus) jobs bill.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) would ruin so much of what’s best about the Internet: They will give the government and corporations new powers to block Americans’ access to sites that are accused of copyright infringement, force sites like YouTube to go to new lengths to police users’ contributions, and put people in prison for streaming certain content online.

Senator Wyden just issued this new statement on the fight against Internet censorship, and you can check out his call-to-arms video at StopCensorship.org

The filibuster affords senators an opportunity to stand up for what they believe in and there are few things I believe in more than ensuring that every American has a voice and an opportunity to get ahead.

Right now, the Internet gives every American that voice while making it possible for every entrepreneur, thinker and innovator to compete alongside the biggest and most moneyed interests.

It is my hope that — with your help – my colleagues in Congress will realize that a free and open Internet is something that we as Americans should celebrate and not allow those special moneyed interests to quash.

It is my hope that – with your help – my colleagues in Congress will realize that PIPA/SOPA are the wrong way to protect intellectual property because the price they exact on the Internet is too high.

With your help, I believe we can get that word out and prevent these misguided bills from every reaching the House and Senate floor, but if they do reach the floor you can count on me to stand up and make our voices heard.

This Wednesday, Congress is considering a law that gives the US government (and any private corporation) the power to block websites, remove them from search engines, and cut off their sources of funding.

Leading civil liberties and tech policy organizations are organizing an Internet-wide day of protest in response, inviting sites to turn their logos black and drive people to contact their members of Congress.  It’s called American Censorship Day (americancensorship.org and #USACensored on Twitter) and sites can participate by turning their logos black on Wednesday or by running “website blocked” splash pages directing users to contact Congress.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is calling the legislation “the end of the Internet” — and that’s barely an exaggeration.  The sites we use and love the most are the ones most at risk, and the basic principle of open access is under attack.

Insiders say that HR 3261 or the “Stop Online Piracy Act”– which enjoys the support of both parties, the Chamber of Commerce, drug companies, Hollywood, and even several unions — is likely to pass barring an unprecedented uproar from the public and the tech community.  The protest aims to create just that.

(We want as many sites as possible to participate, and we’re making it easy for them to do so: If you’re interested in taking part click here and email us at protest@fightforthefuture.org)

SOPA is hurtling through Congress because it aligns a number of narrow corporate interests.  Hollywood wants the power to shut down entire file hosting sites and sue social media websites into submission.  Media companies want the power to block streams of sporting events.  Drug companies want the power to block Americans’ access to affordable drugs from Canadian pharmacies.  The net result?  America’s Internet could careen away from the principles of freedom and openness it embodies — and towards the likes of China’s, with the government and corporations blocking Americans’ access to large swaths of the web. Read the rest of this entry →

Today more than 50 venture capitalists — from forty firms which have funded many of today’s most popular Internet companies — have announced their opposition to S968, Senator Leahy’s PROTECT IP (PIPA) Act. In a letter to Congress, the financiers noted PIPA, “will stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness.” The new business opponents join free speech advocates and companies like Google in pushing back against this dangerous legislation.

You can read the letter and urge your lawmakers to oppose PROTECT IP by clicking here.

PIPA would give the government the power to force Internet service providers, search engines, and other “information location tools” to block users’ access to sites that have been accused of copyright infringement — initiating a China-like censorship regime here in the United States.

As one signer of the letter noted, “The signatories to this letter work for firms that manage over $13B. We are early investors in services like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Skype, Groupon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Foursquare, and a host of other important web services. The services we have backed now reach over a billion users.”

In particular, the letter’s authors worry that:

1) By requiring “information location tools” — potentially encompassing any “director[ies], index[es], reference[s], pointer[s], or hypertext link[s]” — to remove access to entire domains, the bill puts burdens on countless Internet services.

2) By requiring access to sites to be blocked by Domain Name System providers, it endangers the security and integrity of the Internet.

3) The bill’s private right of action will no doubt be used by many rights-holders in ways that create significant burdens on legitimate online commerce services. The scope of orders and cost of litigation could be significant, even for companies acting in good faith.  Rights-holders have stated their interest in this private right of action because they worry that the Department of Justice will not have enough resources to initiate actions against all of the infringing sites.  Yet, why should costs be shifted to innocent Internet entrepreneurs, most of whom have budgets smaller than the Department of Justice’s?

The more Americans have heard about the details of Leahy’s PROTECT IP bill, the more we’ve seen them come out against this dangerous Internet censorship effort. The very people who made the Internet as we know it today possible are opposing this bill — and that should trouble anybody who claims to care about protecting American jobs.

You can read the letter and urge your lawmakers to oppose PROTECT IP by clicking here.

More than 350,000 people have signed Demand Progress’s petitions against PIPA and the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act — an earlier version of the same bill. Over 50,000 members emailed their lawmakers last week to demand that they join Senator Wyden in opposing the bill. And more than 6,000 Demand Progress members have called their lawmakers to urge them to oppose PIPA.

For all the energy it puts into obsessing over its bipartisanship fetish, the mainstream media seems to rarely notice that most righteous form of the phenomenon: Bipartisanship without compromise.  Honest to God left-right solidarity on issues like war, bailouts, and censorship. In a show of such unity, Demand Progress is teaming up with Don’t Censor the Net today  to oppose Hollywood’s calls for the government to block and seize more websites.

The move comes as Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) have scheduled a 2pm press conference to highlight legislation to rein in “online infringement.”  The model for those efforts appears to be the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), introduced by Leahy in late 2010 as S3804.  It passed Senate Judiciary on a 19-0 vote, but Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) put a hold on it.  More than 300,000 people have signed our anti-COICA petition.

COICA would let the Department of Justice (DOJ) force internet service providers (ISPs) to block individual internet users’ access to sites that are asserted to have engaged in a low, ambiguous threshold of copyright infringement.  COICA would also afford DOJ new powers to seize websites.

Demand Progress opposes the proposal because, as our co-founder Aaron Swartz puts it, “In their attempts to reign in online file-sharing, Hollywood moguls are once again willing to risk massive censorship. COICA’s passage would be a tremendous blow to free speech on the Internet –– and likely a first step towards much broader online censorship.”

Don’t Censor the Net is run by former Bush-Cheney webmaster Patrick Ruffini, who stands with us because “The core conservative principles of small government and basic individual freedoms should not be abandoned on the internet. COICA represents a dangerous new encroachment of the government into our digital lives.”

We also stand together in opposition to a recent spate of legally questionable domain name seizures undertaken by the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The government appears to have targeted sites that merely link to, but do not house, infringing content: this was not previously understood to be a crime.  Additionally,  DHS and ICE admit to having “accidentally” seized more than 84,000 domain names earlier this year.

If you want to join more than 300,000 Americans in opposing COICA, please click here. To oppose the website seizures, click here.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s attempt to throw next week’s elections is cause for widespread alarm — their agenda includes privatizing social security, undoing worker and consumer rights, blocking environmental protections, keeping banking regulations loose, and stymieing important health care reforms.

You can help Demand Progress fight back by signing on to our campaign that calls on local chambers of commerce to disaffiliate from the U.S. Chamber. The movement’s already begun, with one New Hampshire chapter breaking off, and several others publicly distancing themselves from the national’s shenanigans.

But if the Chamber’s determination to implement a million regressive changes to our economy, social programs, and regulatory structures isn’t enough to inspire you to fight back, there are at least two extra reasons why the Netroots and anybody who visits sites like this one should be especially infuriated by the Chamber’s power-grab.

1. The Chamber wants to undermine Net Neutrality.  For instance, it released a white paper asserting its opposition to “A variety of proposals [that] have been put forward to regulate the broadband sector under the guise of making the physical infrastructure more ‘neutral’ to the data flowing over it.”

Earlier this year, it issued this statement, praising a recent court decision that asserts that the FCC has no power to enforce Net Neutrality:

It’s good to see the D.C. Circuit clearly restate that the FCC’s authority is limited to what Congress gives them,” said William L. Kovacs, senior vice president for Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Chamber. “The Chamber hopes the FCC will stay on a sensible course to promote investment in competitive networks, which is the best way to preserve an open Internet.

2. The Chamber supports the Internet Blacklist bill that we told you about last month — the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).  COICA vastly expands the government’s ability to block access to certain websites — in ways that run roughshod over due process rights and violate the First Amendment.

COICA came dangerously close to passing the Senate before Congress broke for the elections, but our organizing against it was (at least temporarily) successful.  We expect it to come up again soon: last week the Chamber sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chair Pat Leahy demanding that he pass the bill during the lame duck session. You can help us fight COICA by joining the nearly 250,000 people who’ve signed our anti-COICA petition.

As everybody reading this already knows, as the corporatists accrue further power and gain more control over the airwaves and other modes of communication, the sorts of organizing and information dissemination that take place on the Internet will grow ever more vital to the workings of our democracy.  It’s imperative that we maintain an open, public Internet.

Will you help us send a message to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Fight back by urging your local chamber of commerce to sever its ties with national.