Tech luminaries blast piracy bills in ad

A star lineup of tech luminaries is unleashing an offensive against two online piracy bills in Congress it says would give the government vast new power to censor content on the Web.

The Internet bigwigs — including Google’s Sergey Brin, eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar and Arianna Huffington — blast the bills in full-page ads expected to run in the coming days in The New York Times and The Washington Post as well as in Silicon Valley publications. The ad, an open letter to Congress that was sent late Tuesday, charges that the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act in the House would chill innovation, “deny website owners the right to due process” and hand “the U.S. government the power to censor the Web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran.” The tech executives also write that the bills would “undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.”