[Update: At least one petition to the US Congress opposing this bill can be found at Demand Progress; I will update with others as I find out about them.]

Back when COICA was winding its way through legislative committees, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) gave an interview to Ars Technica, in which she said:

I was in the Congress when we did the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. [The content industry] wanted to go farther; at one point, the original draft outlawed Web browsing, which I thought was interesting. We did the bill, and they’re complaining. It’s what they wanted, but it’s not enough. Now they want to do something else, which is really pretty draconian

Rep. Lofgren also predicted that “if this passes, in a couple years they’ll come back with something even more draconian.” She was mostly right: Even though COICA was killed before reaching a floor vote by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), they’re back with something more draconian anyway.

As Wired notes, PROTECT IP, like COICA, would force credit card companies, ad networks, and DNS server to enact the appropriate form of shunning or blackholing against sites deemed “infringing”. Credit card companies could no longer process payments for the site; ad networks could no longer serve ads to them, and DNS providers would have to cease resolving their IP addresses. But PROTECT IP goes further, requiring search engines to censor their own listings.

Wired does a good job of connecting the dots here; as they say:

Last week, when the Department of Homeland Security leaned on Mozilla to remove a Firefox add-on making it simple to bypass domain name seizures, we wondered at the request. After all, the add-on only made it easier to do a simple Google search, and we wondered “what the next logical step in this progression will be: requiring search engines to stop returning results for seized domain names?”

Turns out that’s exactly what’s being contemplated.

In addition to forcing search engines to become censors, the bill also gives copyright holders a “private right of action” — a phrase that should chill the blood of anyone who intends to run any Internet site of any kind, because of the potential for mischief it embodies. It means that anyone who has or asserts a copyright could get their own, direct, court order to label a site “infringing” and have it blocked. They wouldn’t have to ask a DA or the Justice Department to go to the courts for them.

Does that sound ripe for abuse? You’re not the only one who’s noticed. As far back as April 6th, Google’s Kent Walker testified before the House Judiciary Committee that a private right of action “would invite suits by ‘trolls’ to extort settlements from intermediaries or sites who are making good faith efforts to comply with the law.” Another way of putting it is: If you thought DMCA takedown claims have been overreaching, getting dubious, or flat-out fraudulent, then you ain’t seen nothing yet.

But aside from giving anyone who owns (or claims) a copyright the ability to file a court order and get any site they dislike shut down immediately, the PROTECT IP Act also encourages search engines, ad vendors and credit card processors to pre-emptively cut off anyone they think might be an infringer. If they “voluntarily”" cut off a site because they have (or claim) “a reasonable belief that the Internet site is dedicated to infringing activities”, they’re held blameless (and indemnified against damages in any suit by the poor slob whose contract just got violated).

In other words, the government is trying to make it so that risk-averse corporations will do their dirty work for them, taking a “better safe than sorry” approach when it comes to banishing their own clients from the Internet.

Oh, and of course, the idea of “infringement” is one that goes almost completely unexamined. Feel free to search the entire text of the bill. There is nary a mention of Fair Use, the parody/satire exemptions, 17 U.S.C. § 107, or of any other text string that might seem relevant. (Oddly, it doesn’t seem to be quite the same text that Wired was working from; their article has at least one quote that I can’t find in Scribd’s text. Not that Scribd’s search feature is even half as useful as bare eyeballs. But the general sentiment seems pretty much the same.)

Before I wrap up: Major kudos to Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Zoe Lofgren for their efforts to stop the original COICA. I spend a lot of time calling out bad actors in this blog; I’m happy when I get to congratulate someone who’s doing good. For the same reasons, kudos to the Mozilla Foundation for refusing the government’s request to censor the MafiaaFire Redirector plugin.

But for the people behind this new bill? Nothing but shame, blame, raspberries — and hopefully, a swift removal from office. The agenda (for Americans, at least) is clear:

1. Contact your legislators and urge them, in no uncertain terms, to reject this bill. Not to compromise on it or try to water it down, but to kill it dead.
2. Find out who is sponsoring this bill, and vote them out of office as soon as they come up for re-election.
3. Finally, start a movement to pass legislation that would counteract Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Especially after the outcry against COICA, this bill is a slap in the face to individual voters — and a gift to the corporate monoliths who obviously paid handsomely for it. This corporate meddling in politics has gone far enough, and will only get worse until we roll back the trend of excessive monetary influence over our legislators.

Outside the US? I wish I could say that you could make a difference to this struggle somehow, but honestly, I doubt it.

I am not a fan of government secrecy. Maybe some things should be kept secret, but by and large? Our government has overused that excuse to the point of absurdity. We can no longer trust the government to keep its citizens informed about what it’s doing.

Since the run-up to the Iraq War, it’s been pretty obvious that we can no longer trust the news media to keep us informed, either. At that point, journalism utterly failed in its civic duty to question the government and inform the populace about critical issues. Someone needs to step into that gap.

Why I’m Not Pro-WikiLeaks

Some of the information they leaked includes data that identifies people in the field. This puts real people at real risk — people who are trying to do good. This is not responsible reporting.

For all the reasons that it was bad when the Bush Administration blew Valerie Plame’s cover, it’s also bad now that WikiLeaks has blown the cover of various sources in the field. I can’t support that.

Why I’m Very Much Anti-Anti-WikiLeaks

For all the danger that WikiLeaks’ cover-blowing has caused, I feel much more threatened by the attempts to censor the Internet and shut down discussion. The idea that Senator Joe Lieberman can ask Amazon to pull the plug on any organization’s Web presence and have it done in under a day is absolutely chilling.

Now, upstream providers are denying service to WikiLeaks mirrors as well. There’s a concerted effort to turn WikiLeaks into the Internet equivalent of an unperson. And “unpersoning” people is not the action of a free society. It’s the way a totalitarian regime operates, not the way I want my democracy to behave.

I’m disgusted with the number of financial institutions that will happily process donations to the Ku Klux Klan, but not to WikiLeaks. It’s been pointed out with some accuracy that it’s now easier to send donations to al-Qaeda than to WikiLeaks.

This says something about who and what it is we really oppose. And I don’t like what it says. We need to stand for freedom, for an informed citizenry, and for justice.

(In that vein, AlterNet’s list of Six Companies That Haven’t Wussed Out of Working With WikiLeaks is somewhat encouraging.)

Regarding DDoSes as A Form of Protest

I agree with the EFF’s statement that it “doesn’t condone cyber-vigilantism, be it against MasterCard or WikiLeaks. The answer to bad speech is more speech.”

Regarding the Pentagon Papers Parallel

The argument that this is in any way different from Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers is ridiculous. The two are very similar. If you ever wonder how you would have stood during that incident (“sure, it’s easy to see in hindsight what was right… but would I have done the right thing back then?”)… take a look at your reaction to WikiLeaks. The two parallel each other pretty well.

To the journalists who are calling for Assange’s prosecution: Are you mad at him because he’s doing the job you should have been doing? Are you so full of spite that you’d advocate to eviscerate the First Amendment that protects your own profession? Oh, right — many of you weren’t really making use of the First Amendment’s protection anyway, since you’re not rocking the boat. That’s why Assange had to rock it instead.

Regarding Rape Allegations Against Julian Assange

There has been a lot of disinformation about this. The pro-WikiLeaks side have been claiming some things that are completely untrue. The only reason I can think of to spread such disinformation is that they don’t want anyone to know the real allegations. That doesn’t make them sound like they’re very confident in Assange’s innocence, by the way.

The charges against Julian Assange include allegations that he tore a woman’s clothing off, that he had sex with a woman without her permission while she was asleep, and that he held a woman down by her arms and pinned her with his body weight.

These are real charges of real rape activity, and the things you may have heard about “a condom broke”, or some bizarre thing called “sex by surprise” are all 100% fiction.

Furthermore, the pro-WikiLeaks side’s false claims haven’t just been about the charges against Assange, but also about the women who brought the charges. For example, there’s a claim that one of them is “a feminist” — as if wanting equal rights should be used as an excuse to deny her justice? There’s the claim that she wrote some kind of “article about how to get even with men”, which is also completely false: she translated a preexisting English eHow.com article on revenge in general, not “against men”. Then there are the claims that either or both of the women are in the pay of the CIA — claims that have not a shred of evidence to back them up.

Assange’s supporters have gone beyond simply smearing these women, and have posted their names, addresses, and other identifying information. In many cases, people claiming to support Julian Assange have threatened to rape his accusers. Then they’ve gone ahead and harassed and bullied other women who had the temerity to point out that the “it was just a broken condom” claim was a lie. And of course, that harassment includes death threats — threatening to kill people merely for trying to speak out publicly.

This behavior is completely unacceptable. It’s inhuman. It’s disgusting.

I am in favor of the free flow of information. But I’m also in favor of taking rape charges seriously. And I’m in favor of whistleblowers, accusers, and those why cry “An injustice has been done!” being able to get a fair hearing without being subjected to death threats. That applies to the Swedish women’s accusations against Assange just as much as it does to WikiLeaks’ revelations about the actions of world governments.

Incidentally, we need a good term for the privacy invaders. Folks like the EFF, EPIC’s Marc Rotenberg, Philip Zimmermann and so on get rightly called “privacy activists”. What should we call the people who make the bogus claim that privacy is a sign of guilt, and is something you should give up to prove your purity?

Funny how those folks never seem to want to give up their own privacy, isn’t it? The “If you’re innocent, then you have nothing to hide” brigade never seem to want their own private lives examined. If only someone could have looked into J. Edgar Hoover’s private life… And Eric Schmidt? When c|net published some public information about his salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations — all of which it obtained through Google searches — Schmidt was so incensed, he ordered his entire company to stop speaking to c|net for a year.

Eric Schmidt considers his own privacy to be of paramount importance. Yours? He thinks it’s dirty. Shameful. He could have said that if you don’t want someone to know something “you shouldn’t post it on the Internet”. That might have made sense. (Personally, my rule has always been “don’t post it on the Internet without password-protecting it” — sometimes, there are things you want to share with just a few people, and the Internet is the best means ever for sharing information.)

But instead, he says that “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” There is no middle ground between utterly public and unethical or immoral behavior that you “shouldn’t be doing” at all.

This, quite frankly, is the same “if you’re innocent, you’ve got nothing to hide… right?!” bullshit we’ve been hearing from far too many quarters for far too long. And it is, most definitely and absolutely, bullshit. Consider that by Schmidt’s standard:

• If you are making love to your spouse, hoping to have children, and you don’t want someone peering in the window? You “shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”.
• If you’re taking a shower, and you don’t want someone poking a camera in past the shower curtain to record you lathering up your armpits? Hey, maybe you shouldn’t be doing that. Shame on you!
• If you’re getting a happy surprise ready for a friend, and you don’t want the friend (or that gossipy mutual acquaintance who just can’t keep a secret) to see you shopping for supplies — you must be up to no good, you sneaky rascal!
• When you wake up in the morning and stumble into the bathroom to brush your teeth, with your hair pointing in 15 different directions and your breath capable of overwhelming someone an arm’s length away, you’d better be ready to let the J. Edgar Hoover types into your bathroom or be branded a criminal. Hey, I’m not proud of moments like this, either, but there’s a big difference between “not at my best” and “has something to hide”.
• And how about when I’m whispering things like “snookums” and “honey-bunch” into my sweetheart’s ear? Those are private moments too — and there’s nothing shameful about them! But they’re still private. They’re for me and her alone.

I don’t believe that Eric Schmidt really thinks “maybe [I] shouldn’t be doing [that] in the first place.” I think he’s desperately trying to scare people into allowing yet another invasion of our privacy.

And I don’t think we should stand for it. The assertion that “if you want to retain any privacy, you must be guilty of something” is a foul, pernicious lie, and we need to fight it wherever it crops up. It’s been cropping up far too often lately.