Help Protect the Internet

By Joshua Marks, Curriki chief technology officer

I’m asking that you please consider voicing your concerns to members of Congress to stop SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the Protect IP act in the Senate.

As you know, Curriki encourages collaboration and the enhancement and redistribution of educational content so that a world-class education is within everyone’s reach.  If these bills are enacted, this practice could be considered an infringement.

Timothy Vollmer of Creative Commons points out several reasons why we need to get involved:

Why does SOPA matter to online education?

• There is now a whole class of sites that encourage lawful distribution, remixing and redistribution of educational content (e.g. Curriki, Connexions, P2PU, YouTube, CK12). Should someone accidentally or purposefully upload copyrighted material, that service would generally be protected from liability by the DMCA. A content owner would issue a DMCA takedown to start that process for removal.

• If these bills are enacted, sites that host or use user-generated content could be required to monitor their site for infringing material, and could potentially have their domain name disabled by the government if content owners thought that infringement was occurring on that site. This represents an entirely new legal power given to content owners to control the flow of content online and to shape the very foundation of the Internet.

• This battle is not just about a material threat to existing sites, but fighting for future innovations and future services that have yet to be created.

I appreciate your time and hope that you consider joining us to stop SOPA and the Protect IP act.