Freedom of speech is under attack once again as the bloated US federal government continues its quest to destroy the last bastion of free and open communication -- the internet.
Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-Vt.) "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property" bill, also known as the Protect IP Act, is more oppressive and restrictive to free speech than even communist China's internet censorship protocols, and a group of law professors recently wrote an open letter warning that the bill would allow the government to freely pull websites without any proper legal restrictions.
Last November, Natural News reported that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had already begun seizing website domains and ordering that they be shut down permanently for supposed copyright infringement -- and the agency did this apart from due process or a proper trial No law or legal precedent permitted this rogue agency -- which is a tyrannical spawn of post-9/11 hysteria that is not even constitutionally legitimate to begin with, by the way -- to undergo its website seizing operation. The agency simply decided to break the law and do as it pleased.
Though it is currently stalled in the Senate, according to a recent report from PrisonPlanet.com, the Protect IP Act may eventually get passed under the radar, and eventually turn the internet into a government-run propaganda tool similar to network and cable news.
"At a time when many foreign governments have dramatically stepped up their efforts to censor Internet communications, the [Protect IP Act] would incorporate into US law -- for the first time -- a principle more closely associated with those repressive regimes: a right to insist on the removal of content from the global Internet, regardless of where it may have originated or be located, in service of the exigencies of domestic law," says a portion of the open letter.
After all, protecting intellectual property from theft will help ensure that private enterprise flourishes, right? Indeed it will, but the provisions of the Protect IP Act completely bypass due process, and do not even allow website owners a fair trial -- the bill basically gives the federal government arbitrary power to shut down websites that it feels are an "infringement."
And since the bill would require no independent investigation or proper trial prior to enforcement to verify that any laws had actually been broken, the US government would thus have the perceived authority to target practically any website, or party connected to that website, that it chooses to, without any checks and balances or restraint.
