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SOPA and PIPA So Far
Since their inception SOPA and PIPA have raised concerns about blacklisting from online freedom advocates, and tech industry giants. Law professors worry that they could stifle growth and innovation. Other's have warned that the legislation would hurt scientific debate and open discourse on the internet. SOPA and PIPA are not without support however. In fact a wide variety of companies have backed the proposed laws, bringing together an eclectic group. After months of debate, the removal of one of the more controversial provisions, and The White House expressing its own concerns over the law in its current form, Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced that he was shelving SOPA. PIPA however remains, and it is likely that a re-worked version of the House bill will be brought up soon.
Finally, slashdot chimes in on SOPA...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
as of yesterday SOPA was resurrected in the House
I am collecting screenshots of blacked-out sites today so we can have them all in one place. If you know of any other sites, please email them to me.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117902136861919925087/albums/5698963233208682849
Why isn't Slashdot blacking out? It is one of those sites that could be greatly effected by this bill. Besides I need to be more productive today. And most of the sites I visit are blacked out too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How come the article fails to mention that 2 large sites (Wikipedia & Reddit) are both inaccessible today in protest against these laws? This is an important fact and will probably have quite an impact on the public (although maybe not exactly the one intended...)
Also, SOPA wasn't cancelled, just delayed!
It's going to resume in February. http://judiciary.house.gov/news/01172012.html
SOPA is NOT DEAD! “Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February" http://torrentfreak.com/sopa-is-baaack-120117/
I mean seriously. There is a real reason why congress is less popular than things like Paris Hilton and Nixon. These guys are so far into the pockets of big business that they don't even have a minor inkling of what is best for the majority of America.
I got here through a series of tubes
Why is slashdot still accessible?
[This comment was flagged for linking to copyright-sensitive content]
"Every 200 years there needs to be a revolution" - Thomas Jefferson
Came to mind when reading this...
If SOPA/PIPA dies in Congress, it is not because the people rose up to oppose the terrible legislation. It will die because enough corporations spoke up opposing it to outnumber the supporters.
I accidentally discovered that if you disable JavaScript on Wikipedia, you don't get the blackout notice. You can browse just like normal.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Hollywood studios behind these bills are some of Obama's biggest contributors. His "expression of concern" is just a pathetic attempt to play both sides of the fence. He would as soon deliver a State of the Union speech in the nude than to veto one of these bills (or anything similar).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You're joking right? There's been a SOPA story on Slashdot atleast twice a week for the last few months..
Yeah, and I believe all from the readers. Slashdot has editors, paid staffers who ultimately decide what's posted (regardless of what the firehose says is the topmost story); there's no good reason they can't write an actual editorial or stage a protest when situations call for it.
Slashdot didn't participate in the blackout, and after multiple comments and submissions, including mine, criticizing them for being spineless punks...we get a massive pile of links spelling out a bald summary of the story so far. No opinion, no support for a cause in which they have a vested constitutional interest, nothing.
Either users submit the content and run the site, or the editor's actually have a purpose and they should show some balls. This awkward middle-ground where they never have an opinion and almost never come up with content - yet still hold final control over what stories go up and reword or cut down the summaries as they see fit - sometimes looks pretty pathetic. This is one of those times.
There is a real reason why congress is less popular than things like Paris Hilton and Nixon.
Could've fooled me. I mean, with a 95% reelection rate, I would say they're a pretty popular bunch
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
That's because every other congressman sucks, but mine. It's those other assholes that are bringing it down. /sarcasm
This is the 2nd Amendment issue of our age, and like the NRA we need to be eternally vigilant against never-ending attempts to restrict our rights.
Personally, I support the EFF as the equivalent of my NRA.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I actually expected that, and warned of it in my own submission this morning. I think some people don't fully understand what 'tabled' means.
Eric Cantor is Speaker of the House, and he's the one who 'tabled' SOPA yesterday, according to the stories we've been reading. The Speaker controls the House by controlling the schedule. He decides what gets floor time, and if he refuses to schedule something for a vote it can't become law.
No bill is actually dead, however, until the legislative year is over. If a bill "died in committee", the committee could consider a new draft or change their minds outright; if it died because the Speaker wouldn't schedule it, he could come into work the very next day and say: "Hey, that thing I said we wouldn't vote on until my mother-in-law gave me a blowjob in the back seat of my Mercedes? Well, granny puckered up last night and it was reeaal nice, so everyone pick up your clickers and put in the old yay-or-nay on this bill!"
So when he supposedly shelved SOPA yesterday Cantor wasn't making some sort of vow or invoking a rule that destroyed the bill: congresspeople could still talk about it, continue to work on it, and continue rounding up votes for or against it. Apparently they did. He was still free to change his mind, and apparently he did. So at the moment it's been re-scheduled yet again for markup.
If you don't like a bit of legislation, do not rest until the session is over. That's the only time you can be sure that particular bill won't go through.
And when I say that particular bill I mean it specifically: it happens frequently that the same proposed law, sometimes word-for-word, comes up year after year after year, in bill after bill, until it finally gets through. It happened when North Carolina effectively banned municipal broadband this year; that was the third try for that one. There could be a second, third, fourth and fifth try for SOPA until Hollywood gets what they want. Pay attention and be vigilant. Their lawyers don't sleep, and neither can you if you want a free internet.
I see Facebook and Google made a MASSIVE effort to change to their homepages and educate people - especially in non US locations. Talk about a half baked attempt at a protest. Props to Reddit, Wikipedia, Wired et al. who actually went through with it - worldwide!
Heh - "Shelved" - that's an awesome word.
"Look! It's on a shelf! Look again! We took it OFF the shelf!"
What were we thinking, that they threw it in a pit of flames and burned all the copies?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Write your senator and ask them to shut down the entertainment industry. I can't think of a reason not to? Half the stuff I wouldn't watch/listen to if it was free anyway.
And Fark, Reddit, and Wired are for digital neophytes who aren't well informed about the topic? Because they all participated to some degree, and if it's only a 'nuisance' for a place with informed readers to participate in a protest then the readers of those websites are either much stupider than ours or their editors much dumber than ours...
The point of the damn protests is to point out how inconvenient and destructive it would be for your favorite sites to disappear without notice thanks to the instant, warrantless takedowns that SOPA would enable. Leaving a major tech news site on-line, where all of their users can bitch and speculate about the protests rather than experience being cut off, actually kinda blunts the effectiveness.
Just because we get it in theory doesn't mean there's no value in solidarity or that it wouldn't be good for us to experience it firsthand for a frickin day as further impetus to prevent a future where we could experience it for a lifetime.
And ultimately, slashdot isn't that important.
I think this topic is so much more than just SOPA and PIPA, it's much more broad, it goes to the very question what is government for?
One cannot be pro-copyright and pro-patent and simultaneously be anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA without a serious case of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.
You can't handle the truth.
Internet control by the MSM and Hollywood is going to happen. Maybe not this year. There will be a '9/11' like event or some other method but it will happen. Give it up geeks.
Of course, if you lived in the 14th district of Texas, that would actually be true.
I haven't noticed anything yet.
Sent to Robert P. Casey, JR, Senator (D) from Pennsylvania:
"Big media may pay your bills, but your constituents elect you, sir. SOPA/PIPA does EVERYTHING for them and NOTHING for us. You should be ashamed of yourself for co-sponsoring PIPA. Please withdraw your support, immediately, and publicly."
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
Piracy is a real problem. I find it interesting that people want to kill PIPA and SOPA, and not change it to allow protection against piracy while still allowing people freedom to use the web. I have a game on the Android market. It has sold around 1000 copies... (it cost just 1 dollar so it's not a matter of cost). Some russian guy cracked my game and by looking on download counters I can tell the game was already illegaly downloaded more than 50000 times. The only thing I can currently do is report every link I found to file share sites... I tried that for a week and noticed that I wasn't being able to work anymore... I wasn't doing anything else but sending DMCA notices. Therefore, I find the current law very flawed. I woudn't care if there was some improved SOPA that would deal with file share sites for instance (Let's face it... they are 95% of the time used for piracy anyway)
So again, this is corporations lobbying congress against the interests of scientists, educators, and the people in general. When will America learn that we are giving our votes and our money to people who does not have out best interests in mind?
No one else to vote in. They come in based on default.
The problem is our system determines the winner based on the most votes. If you got 1 vote and everyone else got 0, you win! Still doesn't mean the majority wants you in.
My specific concern is regarding data centers that utilize shared hosting. Most "Cloud Computing" organizations share IP addresses and DNS server addresses. If they were to block a DNS then not only would the site in question go down, so would all the other sites sharing that host DNS. This is terrible news for anyone who utilizes a colocation data center, as it puts the reliability of your site at risk - even if you aren't doing anything wrong.
Call your senators and representatives and tell them that SOPA is very, very bad. It MUST be stopped.
I called my senator. You should too.
You might be busy verifying and taking shots of all these pages. Very busy.
http://sopastrike.com/#how-to-strike
Nah, My congressman blows as well. I've only ever voted for one person that got elected in my state and he only lasted on term. Stupid Red States.
I got here through a series of tubes
" *Law professors* worry that they could stifle growth and innovation" - how about everyone who knows anything about, well.... anything? (which obviously excludes the folks on capitol hill)
Even if SOPA/PIPA is defeated in congress in its current iteration, the media industry and its lobbying arm likely aren't going to worry in the least. Why? Because they have an ace in the hole: H.R 1981 - The Protect Children from Internet Pornographers (PCIP) Act of 2011. While still in committee since being introduced last summer, and containing questionable provisions about IP logging, It carries with it the same crew of supporters that are pushing the media industries' SOPA agenda. Chances are quite high that they will simply copy/paste SOPA's text onto it, thus giving it the "protecting children" shield from public scrutiny. Any opposition to it will easily be re-framed to wanting to "protect child pornogrophers". This will likely be the next battle and won't be easily won with blackouts and internet stunts. In fact, I'm not sure the public could handle the level of nuance that would be needed to explain why such a bill is dangerous.
Um, I mean, when was the time you COULD trust congress to do what's right? That hasn't been the case for as long as I remember, and probably before I was born as well. Congress simply DOES NOT WORK since corporations can lobby, and mass media can brainwash.
And this isn't just a problem with US congress. All democratic countries are going to hell fast, and have been since corporations & lobbying & mass media. Greed wins.
--Coder
I guess I'll post it in here too. A SOPA comic for your enjoyment.
In a somewhat serious answer to the OP rather than the snarky one that I gave. My two senators are Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk. While Durbin may be in bed with all of the special interests that plague Washington, he has actually done some good for someone that I know. His office help with some immigration issues that my friend was having with his fiancee. She was stopped at customs in O'Hare and was sent back to Poland immediately. My friend petitioned Durbin to help and he actually came through. His fiance was allowed into the country with his help.
Now while I am not in particular fond of congress in general, especially in regards to things like SOPA and PIPA, they do actually help the people they represent. In the case I illustrated above is a case where I don't mind them. Heck, stuff like that should be their primary goal.
Back to the intent of my original post, I was just commenting on why incumbency is so high. People always think that their representation is fine, but it's everyone else that sucks. But I am with you. In general I try to vote out incumbents. Otherwise they get too comfortable, and if they are there too long, they stop representing the people that elected them in because of this incumbency effect.
I hear lots of celebs use it
Korma: Good
It is really silly to suggest SOPA could affect scientific debate or stifle innovation. Really silly.
SOPA is about sites like dwnldcombo, megaupload, 4share, apkapp, dwnldhooyaren, vissoft6, nulledapk, stagevu and so on. It is about dodgy sites, it is about providing a recourse to combat bare faced theft.
It is also nice to see how any comments in support of SOPA always get filtered and never show up. That's Slashdot's moderated democracy.
SECOND post on Slashdot saying it is. Are there any fact checkers around? Anywhere? Can we get a CORRECTION this time?!
"SOPA and PIPA so far"
So there were no chirruping crickets signifying nothing said.
Ha! mine is Hank Johnson of "is Guam gonna capsize and sink?" fame.
BTW, this is the same district that's had Ben Jones (Cooter), Newt Gingrich, and my favorite, Cynthia McKinney
Got ya all beat.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Campaign finance reform and legislation specifically affirming non-interference communications are critical or this will be a never ending game of whackamole where the novelty of Wikipedia blacking out has long since faded into history.
wired.com is censored
The outrage over these bills would not be nearly so great had the previous copyright extensions had not utterly eliminated works entering the public domain, and had the DMCA not been systematically abused against fair use. What we lack in the U.S. today is balance in how we treat intellectual property, especially copyrightable works. Restore the public domain and strengthen the rules governing fair use, and you can have fair IP protection. But I strongly believe that the need for PIPA and SOPA would disappear if we restored the public domain and fair use.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
You know... as in "right to copy"?
OK the subject is odd but have you ever retold a joke? Have you ever hummed a tune heard on the radio? If so you have committed a crime and SOPA could ball gag you and make you disappear.
Theft is a real issue but the draft law has no balance or consequences for abuse.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Shirtless Lamar Smith: "Look at this shelf. Now look at me. Now back at the shelf. Now back at me." and so forth.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
What's really upsetting about SOPA is not the content of the legislation (there has been even nastier stuff proposed in the past, and expect worse in the future). It's the naked and unapologetic way in which the RIAA and MPAA have declared that they own the US House of Representatives. It's not new that our politicians are corrupt, spineless and clueless (indeed, the US is actually far less corrupt than most nations), but the corruption that we do have can cause so much damage. Even China can't slam the world as hard as the US, in this arena (that may eventually change).
Frankly, it's embarrassing as hell.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Fucking cowards. They could have killed these babies in their corrupt MAFIAA bassinets with the flick of a switch, as helll hath no fury like grandmothers cut off from their grandchildrens' pages.
Blacked out websites are clearly a derivative work of 4:33.
jews are behind MPAA,RIAA etc.
Jews are behind Wall Street.
Jews are behind funding both democrats and republicans.
enough is enough!
Twitter: @dainsanefh
It is unfortunate how outright irrational people get when the topic of child protection comes up. It is like the intelligent thinking part of their brain just completely shuts down, and they lose the ability to think anything through.
Protecting children is good, we all agree. Blocking adult access to cartoon or digitally-created images of children does nothing to protect them. In fact, it harms them worse on two counts: 1) They are forced to grow up in a liberty-stricken police state, 2) It deprives deviants of other outlets, meaning the *only* stimulation they can get is from actual children.
The evidence at hand is that pedophilia stems from brain malformation, meaning it doesn't heal up over time. Stoic self-denial doesn't make the desires go away. Therefore, making the images go away doesn't make the pedophiles go away. It just leaves YOUR kids as their *only* outlet. You think that makes your kids safer?
Want to protect the children? Allow adults easy access to cartoon images (no real children harmed in producing them) and also dolls like the ones you can get in Japan. Give them a harmless outlet, and continue to punish anyone who harms actual children.
Now watch as people call ME a pedophile for failing to demand permanent taxpayer-funded incarceration for anyone who has an inappropriate desire whether they channel it harmlessly or not.
People are so stupid.
The DMCA (albeit imperfectly) limited the liability of web sites, search engines and the like in the event a copyright owner delivered a take down notice. SOPA/PIPA appears to remove that limitation. You've got a link to something we don't like? You could be equally culpable as a 'facilitator'. Never mind just taking the content or link down and walking away with a clear conscience. To make matters worse, your web site is going to be the deep pockets that content owners go after. That punk with the links to pirated content lives in his mom's basement.
Its likely that many of these cases will never go to trial. Content owners will modify their take down notices to include some amount of blackmail^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H remuneration to keep this out of court. You will comply. And pay. And think twice about ever developing sites that include user content or web search results again. That fixes the piracy problem. And the negative product review problem. And the leaked memos. And that nasty Arab spring nuisance. And lots of other stuff.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think some more attention needs to be aimed at the big businesses supporting these laws and how they will benefit the law makers supporting it. There is a screaming loud uproar of the People against it, yet our lawmakers are scratching their asses and sniffing their fingers in contemplation over it. Forget about the bottom line of campaign funds and fucking think of your constituents' interest. In fact, many of these old farts are in the generation stereotype of not understanding the Internet except for what someone tells them and the dollar can help make a lot of sense to people like that.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
What would help is allowing us to use negative votes as well as positive ones.
Slashdot pussed out when they should have blacked out. How far you've fallen. Joke.
The problem is Media companies are in a large way driving people to these services. As a legit consumer of stream media I am constantly frustrated by how limited or non-existent my options are when I want to watch a particular show. I'm more than willing to pay for things I watch but many times there's simply NO WAY to do it at all. I haven't used illegal streaming but I can totally understand why someone would. Movies without 20 minutes of mandatory previews, all TV shows up right after they air and for any time after, who wouldn't want that?
They sit there and try and squeeze every last dime out of a show instead of opening up and seeing if trying a new technique will possibly even get them more profit. They are also trying to make sure everything still costs way more than it needs to, "sure that 10 year old bluray needs to cost $25, it's bluray and that's harder to make". They are so busy trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle they aren't even trying to make wishes. I know some people are just cheap bastards and looking for free content but others are just looking for a convenient service and the free is just a bonus.
Being from Ireland I don't know who I could write to with the following point, but it is would I'd love to make to a US Senator:
Since when has passing an Act prevented anyone from doing something Illegal? You banned drink once and that failed, you have banned drugs, smuggling, murder etc and still people who want to do these things will continue to do them. All that has happened is that those who succeed at it become fabulously wealthy. While you will catch some/many/most, you will never catch all.
Now it looks likely that some time soon individual states will legalise Marijuana, at which point it will become legal to take drugs but illegal to get access to works of art (music, books & movies) for free. This reminds me of a situation in the UK when it was (at may still be) illegal to sell cigarettes to people under the age of 18, but people could partake of intercourse by the age of 16, thus leading to the joke that you could have sex, but not smoke a cigarette afterwards.
If marijuana is legalised, then you won't be arrested for possession, sale or use of it, but you could be arrested for listening to music.
What you really need to do is pass an Act that forces content developers away from locking down the content they produce to a closed format, or from holding onto the rights to the content beyond a reasonable length of time. I just found out the other day that the famous speech by Martin Luther King "I have a Dream" which was given IN PUBLIC is copyrighted! Who in their right mind thinks that something like this should be in copyright now, or ever?
My wife recently got a new mobile phone (Sony Experia Ray) and is unable to use the music she purchased on iTunes on it, as the only way you can play music purchased on iTunes is by using an Apple device. If I were to go online and download replacement copies of the music that play on her new device, I woudl be breaking the law, but what other option, other than buying it again, do I have?
Please stand up for the people you represent, not the companies that pay you and reject utterly and publicly a policy that will do so much harm to your constituents.
Regards
A concerned Irishman.
You would ruin the World Wide Web. Copyright law's are not an american issue alone, you would need to get the attention of other countries aswell and maybe with a combine effort you can come up with a bill a little more thought out. If not you may aswell take the www. out of the equation and replace it as USOW. ( United States Owns the Web ) sciatic nerve pain