Posted on 12/12/2011 4:09:06 PM PST by khnyny
An online piracy bill in the House would "criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself," according to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Schmidt said the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would punish Web firms, including search engines, that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. He said implementing the bill as written would effectively break the Internet.
"By criminalizing links, what these bills do is they force you to take content off the Internet," Schmidt said, calling it a form of censorship.
The search giant has been at the forefront of a tech industry backlash against the legislation from House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas).
"If Congress writes a bad law, we all suffer," Schmidt said.
He compared the proposal to the Web censorship practiced by repressive foreign governments like China and doubled down on that comparison when speaking with reporters after his remarks at the Economic Club of Washington.
"It's not a good thing. I understand the goal of what SOPA and PIPA are trying to do," Schmidt said of the Senate counterpart bill, the Protect IP Act. "Their goal is reasonable, their mechanism is terrible. They should not criminalize the intermediaries. They should go after the people that are violating the law."
Schmidt also criticized SOPA for targeting the Domain Name System, which experts have warned could undermine the security of the Web.
"What they're essentially doing is whacking away at the DNS system and that's a mistake. It's a bad way to go about solving the problem," Schmidt said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I thought that you could make one archive copy. How can one even backup his OS if not?
Anytime "Google" is involved, I'm a little wary...
If it keeps coming through on IP addresses ONSHORE, arrest and prosecute the perps. If offshore, make it a diplomatic/international crime issue.
bump
Quick Summation: One criminal technique is to put up fake sites to impersonate banks, etc. In order to direct people to the fake site, they hide the IP address of the real site. Browsers can defeat this trick by continuing to search for another DNS server to find the correct IP address data.
However, under SOPA, it would be illegal to code browsers to do that, because the method could be used to circumvent SOPA's mandated Great Firewall of America.
His actual faith is in the "Almighty State", as evidenced by his introduction of this Orwellian garbage.
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