Today, Motion Picture Association Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin delivered remarks confirming the organization is working with Congress to enact site-blocking legislation which would force broadband providers, DNS lookups, and other infrastructure providers to refuse public access to websites accused of copyright infringement – risking the ability of all people to communicate freely online. Public Knowledge opposes site-blocking bills for jeopardizing the Open Internet.
The following can be attributed to Meredith Rose, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:
“With today’s announcement, the MPA has made its intentions crystal clear: It wants to give itself and its members the power to force any internet infrastructure provider, up to and including the broadband providers that service your home, to cut off access to websites on their say-so alone.
“This concept, and the content industries’ attempt to ram through the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ (SOPA) and similar bills, was what prompted the 2012 Internet Blackout, the single largest online protest against pending legislation in the history of the internet. The Internet Blackout halted SOPA’s quiet and well-funded lobbying campaign, caused bipartisan lawmakers to listen to the technical experts, and ultimately defeated this disastrous bill. Nothing has changed since then – not the infrastructure of the internet that made this unworkable, not the lack of consultation with technologists, and not the back-room dealmaking – except for the brazenness of the industries seeking it. And contrary to MPA’s stance, site-blocking does not ‘work’ – it results in significant over-blocking of lawful content.
“We oppose any attempt to ram through censorious legislation developed entirely in secret without the public hearing the harsh consequences of this previously failed proposal. This needs to happen out in the open, so that the public can see all the ways in which this proposal is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed.”
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