Jeff Gelles: Worries about online-piracy bill are not so far-fetched

It's known abroad as "the Great Firewall of China": a website blacklist that limits what Chinese Internet users can see as they surf the Web.

Sometimes the reasons are obvious, such as when the firewall blocks websites promoting Tibet separatism or reporting oppression against Falun Gong practitioners. Sometimes they are less so. For much of the day Wednesday, Chinese Internet users were apparently blocked from access to Facebook and Fox News, according to a nonprofit site that monitors Chinese censorship.

No such blacklist operates in the United States - yet. But opponents of antipiracy legislation nearing a vote in Congress say the prospect isn't as far-fetched as it might sound - not because of the aims of those backing the bills, but because of their ham-handedness.

"Once you open up the door, who knows where it leads?" says Julie Samuels, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit that helped organize a nationwide protest Wednesday against the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's sister bill, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

To dramatize worries about the legislation, which is backed by the film and music industries, thousands of U.S. websites went dark for the day or steered visitors to information about the bills. As intended, many congressional offices reported being swamped with calls.

Wikipedia, the user-created online encyclopedia that has periodically run afoul of Chinese censors, blocked all its English-language pages with a warning headlined "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge."

"For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history," Wikipedia said. "Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet."

The rhetoric may sound over-the-top - as do responses from backers of the antipiracy bills such as Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp., Fox News' owner, who lashed out at newfound White House wariness about the bills: "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery."

But the underlying issues - and the threat to the Internet from bad legislation - are hardly overblown.