Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chief sponsor of the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ (SOPA), says that criticisms of the controversial legislation are entirely unfounded, and that the online communities that oppose the bill are illegitimate.

“The criticism of this bill is completely hypothetical; none of it is based in reality. Not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet. Their accusations are simply not supported by any facts,” said Smith in a statement, quoted by Roll Call.

The bills’ anti-circumvention provisions don’t even pretend to limit the bill to foreign sites, and clearly the provisions apply to American sites.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
reply to post by ThorsBrother

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And that a significant part of the problem. We have people with limited-to-no knowledge of how "the Internets" function, trying to dictate how it should function with regard to copyright protected materials.

Under the current provisions of the bill, if someone finds a link buried in ATS that points to the IP address of "Pirate Bay" rather than the domain name (or some other circumvention content), our entire site would be blocked to all US visitors. It's in the bill.

For those intent on clamping down on free speech and the type of discussions here on ATS, I'm certain there is more than one piece of content buried in our 13 million posts that fit the "anti-circumvention" provisions of SOPA.