China, to my eye, started the Internet blacklist that has been strongly discouraged by President Obama. By creating a blacklist of Internet websites, a government and the entities it nominates has the ability to censor certain websites on the Internet.

A new bill being debated in Congress would allow the attorney general to create an Internet blacklist of sites that U.S. Internet providers would be required to block. It seems like Congress is frustrated about how little control they have over the Internet.

The Internet is the ultimate democracy, and this proposed bill needs to be stopped.

The growth, impact and overall power of the Internet and what is created there cannot be disputed. There have been movements in places such as Egypt where the power of the Internet gave power to the voice of the people.

Now our own country is trying to take this away from us. What is even scarier is that senators say they haven’t heard much in the way of objections, probably because just like everything else in America, we tend to take things for granted and when things disappear, only then do we wonder why.

This bill, if passed, would allow Internet providers to disable websites that contain illegal content. As many might think this is a great thing, the biggest site I can think of that would be affected is YouTube. YouTube does maintain its site to remove any content that violates a copyright but many big stakeholders like Viacom see most of the content on YouTube violating a copyright.

When Viacom owns entertainment brands like BET, Comedy Central and MTV and they’ve been experiencing a decline in viewership due to sites like YouTube, you bet they support this bill.

Yes, some of it could be that people are watching illegal content, but most of it is legal. People are just consuming more entertainment on the Internet.

Any bill that looks to censor content is, in my opinion, unconstitutional, especially if the company that is responsible for a certain site has ways and repercussions set in place for anything that is illegal.

America was built on opportunity, innovation, and responsibility. When these three key factors are honored on major sites on the Internet, no censorship should hinder them.

The biggest opposing side to this would be what to do with all the other little sites that have illegal content that don’t honor these three factors. Well, where do you stop with the censorship?

I agree that these sites should be taken down if they neglect to remove illegal content, but once censorship is started and put into the hands of big stakeholders such as Viacom and other big entertainment companies, it will get out of hand.

I want to emphasize and make clear that this is not only for entertainment purposes. This censorship would apply to sites that always gain controversy such as WikiLeaks and any interest groups with strong words. The Internet has always, in the United States, allowed for the voice and power of the people to come through. We can’t let this happen.

I’m for innovation and the Internet is playing a big role in the success of technology innovation in the United States. We don’t want to hurt something good, and we don’t need censorship on the Internet when we already are continuing to establish ways of monitoring, controlling and preventing illegal content from appearing.

Let the improvements continue, along with the occasional hacks by Anonymous to keep us in check, and lock up the idea of censorship on a government level.

So, the bill must be stopped, and you can do your part by going to http://demandprogress.org/blacklist to sign a petition that stops the Internet blacklist.