There's been a lot of hoopla recently over the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and ProtectIP bills being proposed right now in congress. Tumblr waged a phone campaign against SOPA, and many tech companies like Google have urged lawmakers to vote against these bills.
To give you a little background, SOPA and ProtectIP both greatly increase the faculties given to the U.S. Government as well as copyright holders to shut down websites containing content deemed questionable. Wikipedia describes possible legal repercussions for infringers allowed by SOPA by saying the following: "the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the infringing website; barring search engines from linking to such sites and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a felony." ProtectIP is more directed at sites being run overseas; it would require internet service providers to block access to sites hosting questionable content through removal of DNS records for those sites (making it much more difficult for the average user to reach the site).
Though if used exactly as intended these bills seem fairly reasonable (with the exception of the severity of SOPA's punishments), these bills give the government and copyright holders a huge amount of power in determining whether a site has engaged in infringement. Neither bill requires any due process for takedown requests, and make it difficult for accused sites to appeal the action taken against them. This can lead to some major problems for the legitimacy of the internet as a source of unbiased news.
If abused, the government and copyright holders could use these bills to censor content on any website they want. Both the government and copyright holders could block access to any website, even if it isn't really infringing content (counting on the long appeal process for restoring access to that site). And if the website has time-sensitive material, that material's value could be ruined if the website is taken down at the wrong time. What if the government just disagrees with something, or sees something exposing corruption within their ranks? They could censor whatever they want. This could never be done for paper sources of news, but if we move completely to online news the government could have the power to censor any news they want. If these bills are passed, online news has no chance at becoming a legitimate unbiased source.
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