[tor-talk] The Stop Online Piracy Act

[Andrew Lewman]

On Tuesday, November 01, 2011 00:11:49 Jim wrote:
> I haven't seen this brought up on this list yet, so I thought I would
> mention it.  Tech Dirt (among others) are reporting on yet another round
> of misguided (U.S.) legislation supposedly targeting copyright
> infringement.  Part of this legislation involves attempting to prevent
> DNS from resolving "offensive" domain names.  

I had a conference call with the EFF to discuss SOPA/E-PARASITE. The result is 
this blog post, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/proposed-copyright-bill-
threatens-whistleblowing-and-human-rights. If the text of SOPA sounds 
familiar, it's probably a copy of what is going on in China to justify their 
continuing clampdown on the Internet, 
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/06/08/china-increases-internet-control-takes-
down-hundreds-of-websites/.

Generally, Tor works on technology. Technology may always be able to 
circumvent policy, but if something is made illegal, then only criminals 
benefit. We'd rather spend our money on making Tor better for all of the 
positive uses of it, not fighting lawsuits and waging policy battles. However, 
sometimes we have to speak up and help those that do engage in lawsuits and 
policy battles, like the EFF.

If you don't like the EFF, then Fight for the Future is another fine 
organization, http://fightforthefuture.org/.  If you don't like either of 
these, then directly calling your congressperson is a fine step too.

We're going to keep working on making Tor better.

-- 
Andrew
pgp 0x74ED336B