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GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – I agree with the Wikipedians, all 1,800 who voted that the English version of the site to which they contribute should be whited out, blank, tomorrow, 18 January. In the name of saving the Internet and its honest users, the US Congress is considering laws that, if passed, could take on a life of their own and might one day well have the opposite result, reducing the freedom of information online.

If the voice of Wikipedia, added to criticism by the White House over the weekend, can stop the legislation in its tracks, that is good news for the rest of us using the Internet right now.

Please read the Wikipedia pages on these laws, as a starting point, the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, to understand the broad reach such laws would give to the American legal system.

The US is not alone in trying to create legislation that reaches beyond its own borders, but I am concerned about growing American public acceptance of the notion that the tentacles of the American legal system can and should reach beyond US borders. These laws are too often created by politicians keen to please hometown voters who know precious little about the rest of the world.

I’ve covered the new US-Swiss double taxation treaty and watched US pressure on Switzerland build, to obtain bank data, in recent months. It’s done in the name of virtue and protecting honest taxpayers. Most of us are probably on the side of these (not to mention that we’re probably mostly pro-democracy and anti-terrorism, two more US political buzzwords) but there is a more sinister side to this bullying behaviour and I’ve concluded that a rambling American bureaucracy can too easily take advantage of laws made in a different time and for different purposes. The result in this case shows little understanding of and respect for Swiss laws.

Why would Internet laws that are widely viewed with skepticism outside the US as censorship be any more respectful of other nations’ legal systems than tax legislation? Those who write the laws don’t interpret and enforce them.

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