Marco Rubio Joins Protests
Marco Rubio Joins Protests – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida joined the thousands of websites Wednesday protesting the government’s Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), a bill that legislators claim would help stop Internet copyright infringement but that some online experts warn could restrict the freedom of the Internet.
“I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor,” Rubio posted on his Facebook page. “Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet.”
Rubio’s change of heart comes as a bit of surprise as he was co-sponsor of the bill.
The biggest business names participating in the blackout against PIPA and the similar legislation entitled the Stop Online Piracy Act include user-based encyclopedia Wikipedia, web browser Mozilla and photo-sharing site Twitpic.
“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history,” Wikipedia stated on its website. “Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”
Besides those sites going totally dark, search engine giant Google and other sites have put up anti-SOPA content on their website in solidarity with the blackout.
In New York, members of the technology community planned a protest outside the offices of New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand who support the legislation.
“This legislation would give the government and corporations the ability to censor the net in the name of protecting creativity simply by convincing a judge that a site is ‘dedicated’ to copyright infringement,” The New York Tech Meetup’s website stated. “More importantly, the legislation amounts to a wholesale re-engineering of the open web in a way that would allow the US government to prosecute Internet users without due process, which in turn would discourage innovation, limit investment, and hurt our economic future.”
Tags: marco rubio, Protests
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