The Fight for a Fair and Free Internet. When Rebecca MacKinnon was working for CNN in Beijing from 1992 to 2001, she and her fellow expats expected that the coming age of global networking would strongly undermine the Communist Party's grip on the reigns.
But a decade later, she writes, "I grew to believe that we were naive. " The Internet is not the stepping stone to democracy she had hoped. In part, that's because citizens aren't the only ones building the net. Corporations and governments are shaping its space and its power, and oftentimes in ways that work against democratic goals. Blackout Protesting SOPA, PIPA Bills Makes Statement on Censorship. Wikipedia was just one of many popular websites that went dark yesterday, in an unprecedented protest against controversial anti-piracy legislation that threatens the open internet — and reporters are scrambling to understand the debate in familiar terms: Is it right vs. left?
Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood? But opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, is shattering those familiar battle lines. Back when so-called “network neutrality” regulation was the hot-button technology issue of the day, conservative Republicans such as Rep.
SOPA Necessary To Protect Our Safety, According To RIAA VP. How Much Does File Sharing Resemble Stealing—and Does it Matter? - Megan McArdle - Business. Kevin Drum takes a courageous and rare stand on the internet, arguing that yes, downloading millions of files from JSTOR while evading attempts by both JSTOR, and the owner of the network you're using, to stop you, is, well, pretty close to stealing: This affair has raised a lot of hackles among the infovore set, but I'm a little stumped about why I should be outraged.
As James Joyner says, maybe this should have been a civil matter, not a criminal one (though Swartz did break into an MIT network closet to do all this), but beyond that does anyone really think JSTOR should just sit idly by as their entire archive is downloaded? Would the librarians at Stanford sit idly by if someone backed up a semi and started shoveling hundreds of thousands of books into it? Sure, there's no evidence that you're planning to steal the books. Maybe you intend to return them all in two weeks. This is a concept that economists call "non-rivalrous goods", and it's very important to file-sharing advocates. Lamar Smith Out Of Touch With The Internet: Still Thinks It's Just Google That Opposes SOPA.
It's really quite stunning to watch Lamar Smith pull out really out-dated talking points as he gets more and more desperate to defend SOPA, as he discovers that all the vaunted "support" that the US Chamber of Commerce promised him there was for the bill meltsaway.
We've already gone through Smith's detailed "defense" of the bill and pointed out that nearly all of it was based on either false or misleading research. And what's worse is that Smith obviously knows this: he specifically cherry picks studies to support his position. Pro-SOPA Comcast uses SOPA-incompatible DNSSEC. January 11, 2012, 2:58 PM — If you've been following the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) adored by music companies, broadcasters and hardly anyone else, you'll have noticed bipartisan coalitions in Congress are among the least strange bedfellows – not to mention other odd conditions or changes – on both sides of the bill. [ Free download: Patents and the lessons learned from Web 2.0 ] It's pretty interesting to follow the money trails between companies hoping to make more money if SOPA passes, in fact, and the politicians supporting it.
Why Hollywood's Idea Of 'Innovation' Is SOPA. A ton of folks have been sending over Steve Blank's absolutely awesome detailed analysis of why Hollywood can't innovate... and the result is SOPA.
It touches on many points we've raised separately, but puts it all together in such a fantastic and comprehensive package. Seriously: just go read it. It kicks off by noting a key point that we've raised in the past, but which often gets underplayed: the vast majority of movie industry revenue these days comes from pay-per-view TV, cable, satellite, video rentals, DVD sales and online subscriptions/digital downloads.
Mainstream Media Gets Wind of SOPA. Largely, the fight between SOPA supporters and those against the potential censoring of the Internet, all in name of protecting the entertainment industry’s intellectual property, has been conducted over the web.
Human Rights Petition: CEO Google Inc.: Convince Facebook, Google, Wikipedia to have a blackout to protest SOPA. Hate SOPA? 6 things you can do to stop it. We The People Petition for veto. Urge Congress to Stop SOPA! The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), known as “SOPA,” is scheduled for consideration at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow.
The bill is aimed at taking down sites that allow Internet users to acquire pirated versions of original artistic content online. At a recent hearing, the ACLU expressed opposition to the bill because it would allow for the takedown of non-infringing content along with infringing content, in violation of the First Amendment. Earlier this week, former Sen. Chris Dodd, now head of the Motion Picture Association, in a presentation at the Center for American Progress advocated in favor of new laws like SOPA that would protect movie studios against copyright infringement by foreign copyright pirates.
We agree with Sen. Whoismyrepresentative.com.