Tonight, I thought I'd check up on the bill's status. Apparently its still a live issue as its being discussed in the press. Much to my suprise, I also learned that another bill, called the Global Internet Freedom Act, was proposed at the same time as the Global Online Freedom Act, and it does exactly what I was thinking we ought to do. This bill funds research on content filtering and filtering subversion to the tune of $100 million over two years! For some reason the bill appears twice on Thomas, once as HR2216 and once as HR4741. I think the texts are the same but I haven't checked line for line. I like this quote:
It is the sense of Congress that the United States should... deploy, at the earliest practicable date, technologies aimed at defeating state-sponsored and state-directed Internet jamming by repressive foreign governments and the intimidation and persecution by such governments of their citizens who use the Internet.
Here, Here! Kathryn Cramer, who I link above calling for censorware to be added to the USML, also calls HR4741 "lame." I could not disagree more. HR4741 has a much better chance of impacting the real situation on the ground in these countries then HR4780, for the aformentioned reason. The pricetag is expensive, much more then I would have asked for, but I'll bet the impact of that expenditure on the U.S. economy would be dwarfed by the impact of HR4780, which makes it illegal to host Internet connected computers inside of any country designated as a censoring state.
So, in sum, if you're talking to your representative, I say No on HR4780 (without serious revision), but Yes on HR2216/HR4741.
