Worse than the DMCA

The Intellectual Property Protection Act (IPPA) looks even worse than the DMCA. If you are a US citizen, please do what you can to campaign against this threat to your fair-use rights.

The irritating thing about such laws is that they affect even non-US citizens, since other countries do not want to be seen as harbouring or encouraging "intellectual property thieves" and usually play along with whatever the US comes up with (except for the EU in some notable cases). Even more irritating for us non-US citizens is the apparent willingness of the US lawmakers to please corporates and various lobbyist groups in creating sometimes extremely draconian or irrational laws to the detriment of the fundamental rights of its own citizens (and the US citizens do not seem to mind all this very much). The appalling thing is that the magic word "terrorism" is used as a blanket weapon to silence killjoys who dare to question such travesties.

The proposed PERFORM Act is another example of what I am talking about.

(Originally posted on Advogato.)

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