The Internet May Be In Trouble. Big Trouble.

The internet as we know it is in trouble. The “PROTECT IP Act” or S. 968 in the Senate and the “Stop Online Piracy Act” or H.R. 3261 in the House are two very real threats to what we've come to know as the biggest open source place for information; the internet.

The PROTECT IP Act , and the Stop Online Piracy Act, give the government the right to blacklist domains that they think infringe upon copyright laws. While this may not sound like a bad thing, it opens up a number of problems. It gives the government the ability to bully sites like Google, Yahoo, and a number of others [even social media] into censoring their information and taking down links at command, under penalty of lawsuit. It takes sites with good intention, such as file hosting services, and shuts them down due to copyrighted content uploaded by an individual [lets face it, with the millions of users on most of those sites, they can't monitor, no matter how hard they try].

It can also stop small web-based startups from making business, and put regular people in prison for up to five years/get them heavy fines simply for having a copyrighted song in the background of a video they post to Youtube.

To learn more about these bills, here's a short video explaining a bit more about them, and what they mean to us:

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

If you would like to contact a representative, and let them know you are against these bills, here's a helpful link that will connect you to the right person: http://www.tumblr.com/protect-the-net 

Your voice will be heard.

Don't be afraid to call; they're really nice. =)

The Internet Kill Switch

[Note: This was written with an article via TechCrunch as it's source. You can read the original article here.]

Recently, in both Egypt, and now Libya, governments have decided to shut down the entire internet for their country. This not only fueled protests already occurring in said countries, but also arose the question, if our government wanted to shut down the internet completely to prevent a cyber-terrorist attack, or just in general to do so, would they be able to do so?

To turn off the internet in Egypt, the government simply forced their Internet Service Providers to shut down their servers. In Libya, the internet was still up, but the traffic allowed through it was throttled down to 0, so nothing could go in or out. Theoretically speaking, if the United States Government wanted to, they could simply force all of the major Internet Service Provides offline, but what they may have in the works is much simpler.

A new bill was been proposed, known as the "Internet Kill Switch" bill [even though those words are not included anywhere in the bill] some time ago. It has since stirred up a good amount of controversy, and in an attempt to make it more acceptable to the American people, it has been revised, and given the name “Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act of 2011" Early this year. [PDF]

While this bill has yet to be passed, and differs quite a bit from the original bill, it's still a great controversial subject in may conversations nowadays, as everyone contemplates the idea. It's main advocates; Joseph Lieberman, and President Barrack Obama are pushing the issue still, with it as one of their main hopes for the future.

Something most people are unaware of, however, is the fact that the President already has the power to turn off the internet. This power has been around for a long time, and derrives from the Communications Act of 1934. A section in it [702] gives the president the ability to, in the event of war, “cause the closing of any facility or station for wire communication” without warning. [PDF]

This topic in general has spawned a good amount of debate as to whether or not it is constitutional, or fair to the people. Do you think it's a good idea to have an "Internet Kill Swith" type option for the nation, in the event of a cyberterrorist attack? If you would like to discuss the topic in General, feel free to visit our forums, and talk with the community about it. Tell us what you think!

The current thread we have open for this discussion can be found here although you are welcome to start your own threads, and post wherever you like. See you on the boards!