INTERNET - Open Letter on "IP Act" and "Online Piracy Act"

"An open letter to Senator Leahy regarding Internet censorship" on Newsgroups: alt.politics.usa.constitution

Dear Senator Leahy;

I am very concerned about the over-reaching authority which appears to be in the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act.

References:

Protect_IP_Act

Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

I am a software developer on the Internet. My main site is nodes.net which I have owned since 1998. I am working on a "quality discernment system" to advance the concept of an "intelligent web."

An integral part of the vision I hold is for individuals to "endorse" specific URL's on the web. These URL's could be something I call "metalinks" which are basically re-programmable re-directs to other web sites. These MetaLinks allow people to make a short, easy-to-
remember link for a web search or a web page.

For example, http://oil.nodes.net will redirect you to Energy Prices at Bloomburg. http://occupy.news.nodes.net will produce a search of news for "occupy" at Google news. There are many other search engines which are being included in this syntax at nodes.net

For example, http://vermont.wiki.nodes.net will take people to Wikipedia's entry for Vermont. I didn't program this metalink specifically. It is automatic. You can search for any word or phrase by substituting your word(s) for "vermont" in this URL.

In similar fashion http://05401.weather.nodes.net will take people to the weather for Burlington, VT and http://paris.time.nodes.net will take people to the current time in Paris. There are several dozen of these interfaces to other web sites and there will be hundreds, even thousands more in the near future.

I am concerned that the legislation currently being considered will limit the development of new technology to create an "intelligent web."

While the Metalinks currently in use have all been defined by someone I plan to allow intelligent software to create metalinks in the future.

It would be unwise to restrict the use of intelligent software to define links in my opinion. It's wrong to assume that all links are created by individuals operating independent of each other. Links could be a result of composite or collaborative intelligence.

In the future, metalinks will represent our "collective intelligence" or "community wisdom." That's what I'm working on now. I'm working to
create an "intelligent web." The concept I am working with is "augmented human intelligence" rather than "artificial intelligence."

I am asking you to put this legislation on the shelf for a minimum of 30 days, until 2012, so that there can be more input by the public and
a more careful analysis of what it means for all of us.

Consideration is a virtue. Please consider the effects this legislation would have on me and others who are working to advance the evolution of human intelligence on the Internet.

Sincerely,

Steve Moyer
Internet Developer
Founder, NODES Network
http://steve.nodes.net ( see what can be done with my technology )

P.S. You can see a link of all the Metalinks currently in existence, not including automatic search interfaces, at http://metalinks.nodes.net