Taiwan Web Users Protest SOPA-Like Censorship Legislation with Facebook Rally

When an official from Taiwan’s Intellectual Property Office announced last week that the office plans to amend Taiwan’s copyright law, Taiwan’s web users didn’t take things lying down. In fact, fairly quickly they kicked off an online protest campaign that has already racked up more than 15,000 participants on Facebook, and who-knows-how-many calls and emails to TIPO officials asking them to back down.

The proposed change has net users so up in arms because it would allow for the blocking of foreign websites determined to be host to blatant copyright violations. The blocks would be DNS or IP address blocks carried out by Taiwanese ISPs on orders from the government, and many Taiwanese users are concerned that such a system could ultimately be used as a means of controlling freedom of expression.

The Facebook page — which we spotted via Global Voices, who also has a great rundown of some commentary on the new law — is titled “#freeandopen! Resolutely oppose closing the country, strongly support complete internet freedom!” In addition to the 15,000 users who have responded they’re “attending” the Facebook event, another 2,000 have clicked maybe and nearly 90,000 more have been invited. And 100 percent of that growth has happened over the past five days.

The page invites users to contact TIPO representatives and let them know that many people strongly oppose the plan. It lists names, contact phone numbers, and email addresses for several TIPO representatives, as well as a generic contact email and number. It seems likely that TIPO has been inundated with calls and emails about the planned amendment, but we’ve contacted the office for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

The proposed changes have been compared to other legislation like the US’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which caused massive online protests in 2012 and was widely considered a step towards censoring the internet. The bill was ultimately dropped; Taiwanese net users are hoping that their protests may lead to a similar outcome.

(via Global Voices Online)