*** UPDATED Below ***

You might think “Oh, this has NOTHING to do with me.” Actually, it does. This law basically says “if you post something of someone else’s creation” (i.e. a facebook posting) and that person presses charges, it is going to be a felony.Oh, and Comcast? Liable now for reporting EVERYTHING you do.

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.

*** UPDATE ***

Last week there was a small meeting at Mozilla to discuss SOPA, the Internet Censorship Bill.

It was eerie.  The DC groups were practically screaming “this bill is the worst we’ve ever seen, and we can’t stop it” — while everyone else had barely heard of it.   The consensus?  We needed to wake people up.

Well, this week the Internet woke up.  *You* woke the Internet up.

Check out the numbers and screenshots from American Censorship Day.

Over 80,000 Tumblr users called ther representatives.  SOPA was a trending tweet in the U.S. and between the Electronic Fronteir Foundation, Avaaz, and Demand Progress (groups that are just now working together!) we sent Congress over 1,000,000 emails.

The scary part?  We still might lose.  Though growing fast, our coalition still isn’t strong enough.

The bill is backed by an unholy alliance of Hollywood, its unions, drug companies, and the Chamber of Commerce.  They are pouring money into it, and they’ve been working on this for years.  Yesterday, big players like Tumblr, Mozilla, Reddit, BoingBoing and even 4chan came out strong on our side.  Now it’s your turn.  We’ve got to dig in and go viral.

Can you tell 20 friends about the Internet Censorship Bill?