Bill Would Bar US Companies From Net Censorship

Meredith writes "A bill that would penalize companies for assisting repressive regimes in censoring the Internet may finally be headed to a vote. The Global Online Freedom Act 'would not only prevent companies like Yahoo from giving up the goods to totalitarian regimes, but would also prohibit US-based Internet companies from blocking online content from US government or government-financed web sites in other countries.' Unfortunately, there's also a giant loophole: the president would be allowed to waive the provisions of the Act for national security purposes."

Comments

Re:What about American censorship?

[Asmor]

Those aren't illegal in the US, much to the chagrin of the "think of the children" crowd.

RTFB before commenting, please

[Guy Harris]

Here's The Fine Bill, as can be found if you follow enough links, and here's the entry for it on the THOMAS web site at the Library of Congress. Please read before commenting on the bill. In particular, note that:

• the word "totalitarian" doesn't appear in the bill, just "authoritarian";
• the President of the US determines what countries are "Internet-restricting countries" (fat chance that this would include the US or any of the US's friends);
• the forms of censorship, etc. it affects are providing personally identifiable information to "Internet-restricting countries", filtering search results at the request of "Internet-restricting countries", and "jamming" "United States-supporting content" (government sites and the like) in "Internet-restricting countries";
• the bill doesn't affect whether you can help any country other than an "Internet-restricting country" to censor the Intarweb,