SOPA and You - The Internet Should Be Free. SOPA and You - The Internet Should Be Free As if you were going to be surprised on which side I came down on this one. Even if I get a paycheck from a Hollywood studio, I just can't fathom any reason why we should take steps towards a world like China and block, limit or restrict where and what people see on the internet in America. We are, after all, home of the brave and land of the free. But with that said, I'm going off the assumption that you even know what the fuck I'm talking about when I say SOPA or NDAA is. Maybe I'm just giving the readers of this blog enough credit to follow current affairs. Especially ones that effect places like REDDIT and WIKIPEDIA. Today you may notice that Wikipedia is currently down. Not to nitpick, but it does kind of make it sound like they're protesting piracy and not anti-piracy laws.
So what is SOPA? When you think about it, the entire process regarding SOPA is so fucking absurd. And sure enough, we did it. Sure enough, we win, right? Turntable.fm's Clever Anti-SOPA Protest. Zuckerberg comes out against SOPA on Facebook, gets 75k likes in 10 minutes. Jon Stewart Has Some Harsh Words For SOPA And Its Sponsors. Excellent comment. Do you care to elaborate on what business you are in? To me it seems like something is shifting in the music business finally. But the movie/television business is still totally bogged down in the past. Even games are becoming pay as you play through services like On Live. Netflix just isn't good enough - and it is hardly global. Who wants to pay that kind of money for B-films and year old blockbusters when you can download the newest of the new in minutes - in full HD - for free. If I got into specifics, I would have to stop commenting.
Everything is changing: film, music, television, journalism, writing, illustration, graphic design — all of it. The more we fight it and the more we resist, the more we give our competitors the upper hand. Giving you the heart I've owed you for a while. As a photographer, my area of expertise is evolving rapidly as well... hell, every creative person I know who's putting stuff out there is having to find new models of doing business. Red 5 Starts League For Gamers as Alternative to ESA, to Fight SOPA/PIPA. Red 5 Studios, and its CEO Mark Kern, have announced a pledge of $50,000 and the creation of the League for Gamers (LFG), a new organization dedicated to fighting SOPA and PIPA and to bring members of the gaming community together as an alternative to the ESA (Entertainment Software Association and their Video Game Voters Network, VGVN. This is in response to the ESA funding and supporting both SOPA and PIPA which the LFG believes is not in the best interest of gamers or companies in the long run.
President Obama said from the White House the SOPA bill was ’draconian’ and he will not support it. Red 5 will shut down Firefall and its website on January 18th in a 24 hour show of solidarity, encouraging gamers, developers and all industry supporters to join LFG and stand together against misguided and overbearing legislative initiatives such as SOPA, (Stop Online Privacy Act), and PIPA, (Protect IP), in order to perpetuate and continue industry growth.
Opponent says SOPA may be stalled in Congress. News By Grant Gross January 16, 2012 01:30 PM ET IDG News Service - Controversial online copyright enforcement bill the Stop Online Piracy Act may be stalled in the U.S. House of Representatives as lawmakers try to iron out a compromise, an opponent of the legislation said. Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said he's been assured by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that SOPA will not move forward unless consensus is reached.
"Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote," Issa said. "The voice of the Internet community has been heard. A spokeswoman for Cantor declined to comment. Issa also announced that a Wednesday hearing on SOPA's impact on cybersecurity has been postponed, following a decision by Smith to take out a provision affecting the domain-name system. The U.S. Reprinted with permission from IDG.net.
Tim O’Reilly: Why I’m fighting SOPA.
Why we need to stop SOPA and PIPA. Cambridge, Mass - SOPA - the Stop Online Piracy Act - and a sister bill, PIPA - the Protect IP Act - seek to minimise the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay. While this goal may be laudable, entrepreneurs, legal scholars and free speech activists are worried about the consequences of these bills for the architecture of the internet. At the MIT Media Lab, we share those concerns, and we oppose SOPA and PIPA as threats to innovation on the internet. To limit access to rogue sites, SOPA and PIPA would: Major internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and others, oppose SOPA and PIPA because it changes the liability rules around copyright infringement. SOPA substantially alters this system, and internet companies worry that without protection from contributory infringement, user-generated content sites like YouTube and Twitter would not have come into existence.
Internet Experts to Testify on SOPA at Congressional Hearing. Cyberspace analysts and experts now have the chance to take the stand on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress. SOPA’s passage as a US law is under constant debate among drivers, mostly high-profile media companies, and antagonists and now news broke out that online tech experts would finally get their say on the controversial bill. On January 18, witnesses will testify at the congressional hearing headed by US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “An open Internet is crucial to American job creation, government operations, and the daily routines of Americans from all walks of life,” said Darrell Issa, head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“The public deserves a full discussion about the consequences of changing the way Americans access information and communicate on the Internet today.” Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and technology investor, tweeted, “They said ‘bring in the nerds,’ so I’m headed to DC to testify about SOPA/PIPA.” Breaking: Leahy Recommends Setting Aside Controversial PROTECT-IP Court Provision.
In a statement from his office Thursday evening, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D - Vt.), who co-authored the current version of the PROTECT-IP bill (also known as PIPA) along with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R - Utah), said he is now willing to set aside the most controversial aspect of the anti-piracy legislation currently under discussion. Sen. Leahy now says that the provision that would empower courts to order service providers to block access to foreign sites under investigation for suspected illicit trafficking, should be set aside for further study. Leahy credits his Vermont constituents for giving him insight into the issue, as well as service providers, whom he admits stand in opposition to the provision. The bill is still scheduled for a floor vote January 24, though the statement from Leahy's office this evening indicates that the legislation under consideration may have the controversial court order provision stricken. The full text of Sen. In a response this evening, Sen. MC Hammer Speaks Out Against SOPA.
Reddit Going Dark Jan. 18 to Protest SOPA. LAS VEGAS—Reddit on Tuesday announced plans for a Web site blackout on Jan. 18 in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate companion, the PROTECT IP Act. From 8am to 8pm Eastern next Wednesday, Reddit.com will display nothing but information about SOPA. "Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action," the site said in a blog post.
SOPA would expand the ability of the Justice Department to go after "rogue" Web sites overseas that traffic in fake goods like counterfeit purses or prescription drugs. According to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lamar Smith, the DOJ would have to get a court order against an infringing site, and if granted, could request that the site be blocked. Search engines would then have to remove links to those sites. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by SOPA sponsor Rep.
Al Gore Comes Out Against SOPA/PIPA. Silicon Valley Congresswoman: Web seizures trample due process (and break the law) At 9:30pm PST on February 11, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized the domain mooo.com. They ordered the domain name's registrar to redirect all traffic headed for mooo.com to a government IP address, one which displayed a single stark warning that the domain name had been seized for involvement with child pornography.
But the mooo.com domain name was shared between 84,000 sites; every one suddenly displayed the child pornography warning. The mistake was soon corrected, but the free domain name provider running mooo.com warned users that removal of the banner from their sites might "take as long as 3 days. " One outraged user took to his blog to tell ICE to "get out of my Internet. You'd get no argument from me that there are truly distasteful and illegal things on the Internet. That's true of any society. But there are also proper ways to deal with these problems. Rep. Lofgren wasn't appeased. "They can seize Yahoo or Google or Facebook" Rep. Rep. With Congress on break, SOPA fight continues. Google's Sergey Brin, left, says SOPA would put the U.S. "on par with most oppressive nations in the world. " Even as Congress vacations, opposition to online piracy act bubbles onlineSOPA would crack down on rogue sites by letting government shut them downCritics fear that the bill would crush online freedom (CNN) -- Members of Congress may be on vacation, but that hasn't calmed critics who say an effort to stamp out online piracy would create an unprecedented threat to free speech on the Internet.
Far from fading from memory, the Stop Online Piracy Act (along with a related Senate bill) has become a rallying point for Web freedom advocates in a debate that has pitted Hollywood and other business interests against some of the biggest titans of the technology world. When contacted by CNN, none of those companies would confirm that such a drastic move had ever been considered. The future of SOPA itself is a little murkier. At stake, say supporters, are American jobs. Concerned Educators Letter to Congress. Heritage Foundation Says SOPA Threatens Free Speech. We recently wrote about the somewhat surprising move that The Heritage Foundation had come out against SOPA.
This was surprising mainly because the think tank was famous for being very closely aligned with the MPAA on copyright issues in the past -- even to the ridiculous degree of insisting that "there is no difference between shoplifting a DVD from a store and illegally downloading a copyrighted movie from Kazaa. " However even an organization that has made that statement in the past recognizes that SOPA/PIPA aren't actually about copyright, but about regulating the internet in dangerous ways. The think tank has decided to speak out again about how SOPA "threatens free speech.
" Much of the discussion focuses on the government's totally bungled seizure and censorship of Dajaz1.com. It notes how ridiculously overbroad this kind of censorship is under existing law, and questions why we would want to go down the "slippery slope" of expanding those powers for the government. Anti-SOPA soap. Hal Roberts / Our Circumvention Research Does Not Support SOPA. Daniel Castro of The Information Technology & Innovation Fund recently published a paper supporting the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) currently being debated in congress.
In that report, he claims that research performed by us supports the domain name system (DNS) filtering mechanisms mandated by SOPA. This claim is a distortion of our work. We disagree with the use of our study to make the point that DNS-based Internet filtering works and that we should therefore use it as a means of stopping websites from distributing copyrighted content. The data we collected answer a completely different set of questions in a completely different context.
Among other provisions that seek to control the sharing of copyrighted material on the Internet, SOPA, if enacted, would call upon the U.S. government to require that Internet service providers remove from their DNS servers the names of any sites that either infringe copyright directly or merely “facilitate” copyright infringement. Links: Mr. Constitutional Scholars Explain Why SOPA & PROTECT IP Do Not Pass First Amendment Scrutiny.
Dear Congressman Posey, SOPA is both dangerous and un-American. Image courtesy Flickr user joewcampbell. I live in Brevard County, Florida, Florida's 15th District, represented by Bill Posey, a graduate of Brevard Community College and former real estate agent. He is, in his own way, then, a perfect representation of my lovely Brevard County. In any case, one of his constituents, one of your fellow ZDNet Government readers, forwarded my recent article on the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its sister in legislative stupidity, PROTECT-IP, to our esteemed representative. See also: New House of Representatives bill may strangle the Internet or nerf the First Amendment Congressman Posey responded to her with a very carefully worded form letter, which she then forwarded on to me, with the request that I undertake setting Representative Bill to rights over his little bill.
Now, as a matter of disclosure, I've encountered members of Mr. I beg your indulgence for a moment, Dear Reader, for I must now directly address our elected representative. Boehner’s office cuts off C-SPAN cameras as GOP takes verbal beating. By Stephen C. WebsterWednesday, December 21, 2011 13:36 EDT A strange thing happened Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill. As Rep. Stenny Hoyer (D-MD) attempted to call for a vote to extend a payroll tax cut to middle class and working Americans, his Republican colleagues adjourned the House and walked out of the chamber. And if that weren’t odd enough, it got even stranger: As Hoyer railed against them for failing to help working Americans, footage from C-SPAN went silent, then cut away.
Moments later, C-SPAN took to the Internet to explain that it wasn’t their doing, but someone working for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The incident occurred mere moments after the House went into session. “As you walk off the floor, Mr. “We regret, Mr. And that’s when the audio cut out. Moments later, someone at C-SPAN took to Twitter and explained: “C-SPAN has no control over the U.S.
This video is from C-SPAN, broadcast Dec. 21, 2011. (H/T: ThinkProgress) Stephen C. Stephen C. KeepTheWebOpen.com. (6) UNITED STATES PERSON. The term "United States personmeans- person" means- (a) DEFINITION. For purposes of this section, a foreign Internet site is a "foreign infringing siteif site if (4) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS. The term "intellectual property rightsmeans rights" means the rights of holders of copyrights, patents, trademarks, other ... (1) the Internet site is a U.S.
-directed site and is used by users in owned and run for the purpose ... (5) USTR. (i) IN GENERAL. . (2) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ENFORCEMENT. . (3) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ENFORCEMENT COORDINATOR. (a) DEFINITION. A BILL to amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to address unfair trade practices relating to infringement of copyrights and ... (1) DIRECTOR. . (2) IN REM. AMENDMENT IN THE NATURE OF A SUBSTITUTE TO H.R. 3261 OFFERED BY MR. (a) SHORT TITLE. AMENDMENT IN AMENDMENT THE NATURE OF A SUBSTITUTE TO H.R. 3261 OFFERED BY MR. Sec. 103. (A) PRESCRIPTION MEDICATION. AMENDMENT IN THE NATURE OF A SUBSTITUTE TO H.R. 3261 OFFERED BY MR.
At Web censorship hearing, Congress guns for "pro-pirate" Google. SOPA: Hollywood's latest effort to turn back time | Politics and Law. SOPA goes for House debate Dec. 15 - Post Tech. It’s Time Hollywood Faced the Music Over Internet Piracy: View. Pyright isn't working, says European Commission. Untitled. Stop Censorship: The Problems With SOPA. Internet Death Feared Tomorrow. American Censorship Day November 16 - Join the fight to stop SOPA. US State Department not for internet freedom. As SOPA comes to a vote, O.E.C.D. calls on members to defend Internet freedom. Don't Break the Internet. STOP SOPA, SAVE THE INTERNET. Scribd. Congressional Investigations Into Dajaz1.com Censorship Begin. Recording industry touts bipartisan support for copyright bill. Opposition To SOPA Continues To Grow. Rep. Jared Polis, Web entrepreneur, on SOPA (Q&A) | Privacy Inc. Overbroad Censorship & Users.
Colbert Takes On SOPA. SOPA Delayed – But Not For Long. SOPA hearing delayed, likely until early next year. Public Opposition Accelerates As Latest Anti-SOPA Petition Hits Goal In Two Days.