People Across Political Spectrum Come Out Against COICA Censorship Bill

from the good-for-them dept

We've mentioned before that one of the things we like about intellectual property issues is that they're truly a non-partisan issue. Unfortunately, traditionally that's meant that elected officials from both major political parties have been more than happy to ratchet up the protectionism attempts by the entertainment industry. However, it also means that arguments against such efforts do not (and should not) fall along political lines. That's why it's nice to see a group of "progressive" activists and "conservative" bloggers (I hate both labels, but both of those groups seem to embrace them) team up to protest the reintroduction of the COICA censorship-for-Hollywood bill.

The progressive activist organization Demand Progress and a group of conservative bloggers lead by Republican National Committee Internet Director Patrick Ruffini are staunchly opposed to the bill and the administration's recent moves to seize and shut down domains linking to pirated content.

"The core conservative principles of small government and basic individual freedoms should not be abandoned on the Internet," Ruffini said. "COICA represents a dangerous new encroachment of the government into our digital lives."

"In their attempts to reign in online file-sharing, Hollywood moguls are once again willing to risk massive censorship," said Demand Progress and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz.

"COICA's passage would be a tremendous blow to free speech on the Internet –– and likely a first step towards much broader online censorship."

It's definitely nice to see a broad spectrum of folks recognizing that this involves core American principles of free speech and due process.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, censorship, coica, copyright, patrick ruffini, politics