Senator Wyden continues to be the Senate's truest champion of an open Internet.  

Yesterday, he placed a hold on Senator Leahy's PROTECT IP Act (or PIPA), which would allow the government to restrict ordinary users’ access to websites that have been accused of copyright infringement, by forcing Internet service providers and search engines to block these sites.

Though this bill was unanimously approved yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Wyden has prevented it from going to the full Senate, citing concerns that it would "muzzle speech and stifle innovation and economic growth." Wyden's full statement can be read here.

Express your opposition to PIPA by signing Demand Progress's petition here.  

To call your lawmakers directly, (3,000 Demand Progress members already have!), click here.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt publicly came out against the legislation, and yesterday, Demand Progress and more than a dozen human rights and civil liberties groups sent a letter in opposition to PIPA to Leahy. The full letter is posted here.

Earlier this week, Demand Progress was attacked by the Motion Picture Association of America because torrent site Demonoid linked to us.  This attack reveals PROTECT IP's proponents’ warped sense of how the Internet works, or should work — a world where sites that link, and sites that are linked to, are responsible for each other's actions.

If you are concerned about the government restricting your Internet access, join the 60,000 others who have signed our petition to kill PIPA.

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Demand Progress is a political action committee and online activist group with more than 400,000 members.

These past couple weeks have been a strange and unsettling time in the ever-more-murky world of copyright and intellectual property.  The most concerning development is the proposed PROTECT IP act, the easier to say but still difficult to swallow successor to COICA, has been submitted in Congress.  Immediately following the bill’s introduction a number of individuals, organizations and experts have expressed their discomfort with both the bill itself and the implications it has for the future of information exchange. We at

Demand Progress have been an adamant voice in opposition to both of these bills, follow the link and add your voice to ours.  (http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/protectip_docs)