A short follow-up: all incoming messages will still be received and processed. Only web page serving will be affected during that period.
Thanks Jeff On Jan 16, 2012, at 1:06 PM, Jeff Breidenbach <j...@jab.org> wrote: > The Mail Archive will be participating in SOPA Blackout Day. On January 18th, > 2012 we will be dark. > > The Stop Online Piracy Act H.R.3261 (and PIPA, its sister bill S.968) is a > proposed United States law, please read it yourself. The basic goal of the > bills is to censor all access to non-US websites involved with copyright > violation. We feel there are some fundamental flaws with the proposed > legislation. > > Lawrence Tribe, a Harvard Constitutional Law Professor points out > > 1) "Although SOPA's supporters have described the bill as directed at > "foreign rogue websites," the definitions in the bill are not in fact limited > to foreign sites or to sites engaged in egregious piracy." > > 2) "To compound the problem, SOPA provides that a complaining party can file > a notice alleging that it is harmed by the activities occurring on the site > "or portion thereof." Conceivably, an entire website containing tens of > thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of > infringement." > > 3) "In effect, the bill would impose the very monitoring obligation that > existing law (in the form of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) > expressly does not require. SOPA would undo the statutory framework that has > created the foundation for many web-based businesses." > > As a public email archival service, we are very aware and appreciative of > America's long history of free speech. We don't usually feel like a cog in a > censorship machine. Except for the 153 deletion requests from list > administrators, 4 DMCA takedown notices, and 36 suppression actions by global > internet search engines in 2011. That's on a corpus of 100+ million messages. > Now imagine getting sued or criminally prosecuted for a message that links to > some shady portion of the internet? Or when someone forwards a copyrighted > article to a mailing list? The Mail Archive has proudly provided archival > service for 14 years. But in the end, we are a three person, part-time small > business. If SOPA passes, each of us will have to think: We have families. > The risk looks enormous. -- To unsubscribe, send mail to gossip-unsubscr...@jab.org.
