Saturday, August 11, 2012

Internet freedom in the land of the free?

Invite Friends
Petition-xPeter Petterson


The open Internet is central to people's freedom to communicate, share, advocate and innovate in the 21st century. But powerful interests want to censor free speech, block the sharing of information, hinder innovation and control how Internet users get online. All too often, people in power are making political decisions behind closed doors about how the Internet should operate — and they're doing this without the involvement of actual Internet users. The result is policies that could close down the open Internet and destroy our freedom to connect.

Furthermore, corporations and their allies in government have repeatedly sought to create policies that would give them control over what we do, say, read and watch online. The push to pass SOPA and PIPA was simply one of the more high-visible examples of this. While it's always important to beat back these threats when they occur, we also need to be proactive to protect the free and open Internet. That means supporting positive visions like the one embodied in the Declaration of Internet Freedom.

The Declaration was drafted by a coalition of dozens of organizations, companies and individuals — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, Mozilla and the Center for Democracy & Technology — that played key roles in the fight to stop SOPA and PIPA, two anti-piracy bills that would have irrevocably harmed the open Internet. This coalition is diverse and post-partisan. It reflects many different viewpoints, political persuasions and geographic world views.

Join in the fight for our online rights. Keeping the Internet free and open means more jobs, more innovation, more creativity and more political engagement. It is essential to free speech around the world and we must take a stand now!

For more information, check out these sites:
http://www.internetdeclaration.org/
http://www.savetheinternet.com/resource/98843/what-declaration-internet-freedom
https://www.eff.org/
http://www.freepress.net/
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/
https://www.cdt.org/

No comments: