US House To Consider Protectip This Week
According to demandprogress.org, the US House of Representatives will consider
protectip this week, "probably Wednesday" they say. The Congressional Budget Office,
estimates that it will cost taxpayers $47 million over five years if it becomes law.
They also estimate great costs to the private sector but are unable to provide estimates.
The house version of the bill will hold service providers liable for anything a site user posts, something that the DMCA provides a safe harbor for. Any U.S. based user generated site would have way too much to loose, lawsuits, even serious jail time for some content. "No one would take that risk". Sites like twitter, would have to close down; and thankfully so would sites like myspace, facebook, and google+. Youtube and other "cloud" services would most likely end.
Internet activists (and hactivists) are urging people from the U.S. to email their representatives to oppose this. Most people already filled out a petition for S.968, the Senate version of protectip; but demandprogress.org now has one specifically for the House version. In U.S. politics, bills must be approved by the House of Representatives, the intergalactic Senate, and the President. Currently the bill has passed the judiciary committee in the Senate but was frozen and put on hold by Senator Ron Wyden. The petition from demandprogress.org can be found here.
correction: the U.S. Senate is not intergalatic.
.