Obama Administration Pressures ISPs To Censor Websites

Department of Justice would have power to shut down “unlawful content,” which according to their own definition includes political free speech

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet

The Obama Administration IP Czar Victoria Espinel has been holding meetings with ISPs, registrars, payment processors and others in a bid to get them to block access to websites “dedicated to infringing activities”. However, as we have documented, the government deems such infringement to include political opinions which are antagonistic toward the state, leaving the door open for state censorship of free speech on the world wide web.

Espinel, the White House’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, aims to create a special relationship between the government and Internet companies in order to “harmonize the efforts of law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels and strengthen cooperation with the private sector.”

“While the meeting is carefully focused on stopping websites that sell gray market pharmaceuticals, if registrars start agreeing to censoring websites at the behest of the government, it’s as if we’re halfway to a COICA-style censorship regime already. ICANN, who manages the internet domain name system was asked to attend the meeting, but felt that it “was not appropriate to attend” such a meeting,” reports Datamation.

The meeting was convened to grease the skids for government control of the Internet as part of a back up plan in case the increasingly unpopular Cybersecurity and COICA bills fall by the wayside.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act would, “Establish a path for the Department of Justice to take action against websites dedicated to peddling unlawful content, including leaning on Internet providers, registrars, payment processors and other Internet players to deny services to the offending sites.”

However, as we have documented, material that the DoJ considers “unlawful” and even a potential red flag for terrorism includes Tea Party literature posted on public bulletin boards, as well as copies of the “Obama Joker” poster.

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