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    EU Internet czar tweets against SOPA

    By GABRIELE STEINHAUSER | Associated Press – Fri, Jan 20, 2012

    BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's Internet czar on Friday added her voice to resistance to the Stop Online Piracy Act, in an unusually open comment on pending U.S. legislation.

    "Glad tide is turning on SOPA: don't need bad legislation when should be safeguarding benefits of open net," Neelie Kroes, the EU's Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, said in a Twitter message.

    The piece of legislation, currently in the House of Representatives, would allow the U.S. Justice Department to target legitimate sites where users share pirated content.

    Outrage over SOPA earlier this week triggered a one-day blackout by Wikipedia's English-language service and other popular websites and sparked growing scrutiny of the bill.

    The EU is also working to tackle online piracy, but is trying hard to do so without restricting Internet freedom.

    "Speeding is illegal too: but you don't put speed bumps on the motorway," Kroes said in a second tweet.

    The EU usually avoids openly criticizing pending legislation in the U.S, one of its biggest political allies and trading partners. But politicians on different sides of the Atlantic often don't see eye to eye when it comes to regulating the Internet.

    The Commissioner's spokesman defended Kroes's comments, pointing to the widespread criticism of the bill.

    "It shows that people do have very serious concerns about their access to the Internet and it shows that in addition to enforcement, which is very important, we need to be increasing the number of legal content offers that are available online," Ryan Heath told reporters.

    He added that the EU already has legislation in place to fight online piracy and is currently working on an overhaul of it's rules for intellectual property rights in an effort to make it easier to obtain the rights to distribute content online legally.

    Kroes, one of the most outspoken commissioners who imposed massive fines against Microsoft during her time as the EU's antitrust regulator, has embraced new media.

    Also on Friday, she asked her more than 32,000 followers on Twitter to comment on the shutdown of popular file-sharing site Megaupload.com on her department's Facebook page.

     

    6 comments

    • Indhira
      Indhira  •  Miami, Florida  •  4 mths ago
      What I think about SOPA is ███████████████████████████████████ and ██████████████████████████████████████████████████; furthermore, ███████████████████████████████████, I also consider that █████████████████████████████████████████████, if it's not ███████████████████████████████████. That's why we ██████████████████████████████ so that █████████████████████████ and then █████████████████████████, because ███████████████████████████████████.

      I can't really say what I want :( SOPA won't allow it!
    • justin
      justin  •  Phoenix, Arizona  •  4 mths ago
      “Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” - Benjamin Franklin
    • MEL
      MEL  •  4 mths ago
      Hey hold on a bit ! A man is a Tsar not a Czar, and the wife of a Tsar is a Tsarina. Don't you people know nuttin' !
    • ishtar127a
      ishtar127a  •  4 mths ago
      Sensible. I hope our politicians are learning a thing or two. Evolution isn't only a principle of biology.
    • JoeJamz
      JoeJamz  •  4 mths ago
      I guess comissioner Kroes has never been to Cancun Mexico. The roads have a speed bump right about where you would be approaching 50 miles an hour, thus keeping speeding at a minimum. I dubbed the road from Cancun to Chichen Itza: the Road of 10000 speed bumps. Ka-bump Ka-bump Ka-bump Ka-bump.......
    • Kevin
      Kevin  •  Brea, California  •  4 mths ago
      Evil does good.
      • Fooki
        Fooki 4 mths ago
        Only when it serves evil which is never good so take that Kevin!
     Post a comment
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