Google to Protest Anti-Piracy Bill
Google to Protest Anti-Piracy Bill – GOOGLE’S home search page which is accessed billions of times each day will promote material highlighting the company’s opposition to two US anti-piracy bills.
However the promotion will not appear on Google’s Australian home page, a Google spokesperson said this morning.
Despite the US-centric nature of two bills – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), there is intense interest in the fate of the proposed legislation due to its likely impact on the web worldwide.
Wikipedia already has announced its plan to close its site for 24 hours as a protest against the two bills and now Google and other websites are planning protests to voice their concern over the legislation.
“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” a Google spokesman said today.
“So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page,” the spokesman for the Internet search giant said.
Google is yet to confirm the form of its rejig of Google.com but it is understood the site will not be blacked out.
Wikipedia has announced it will shut down the English version of its online encyclopaedia for 24 hours from 4pm tomorrow to protest against the two bills.
Google plans to use its much-visited US home page to draw attention to the bills while social news site reddit and the popular Cheezburger humor network plan to join Wikipedia in blacking out their sites.
The draft legislation has won the backing of Hollywood, the music industry, the Business Software Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce.
But it has come under fire from digital rights and free speech organizations for allegedly paving the way for US authorities to shut down websites accused of online piracy, including foreign sites, without due process and threatening the technical architecture of the Internet.
The founders of Google, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo! and other Internet giants said in an open letter last month the legislation would give the US government “the power to censor the Web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran”.
Tags: anti-piracy, google
Posted in Internet
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