Slashdot Mirror
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.
It's going to resume in February. http://judiciary.house.gov/news/01172012.html
"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.
Slashdot doesn't need to participate in the blackout. The purpose of the blackout is to inform people about SOPA. The majority of Slashdot readers are already well informed about it so the only purpose of a blackout on Slashdot is to create a nuisance for the readers.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
That's because every other congressman sucks, but mine. It's those other assholes that are bringing it down. /sarcasm
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.
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.
What would blacking out slashdot actually do?
It might demonstrate the future for Slashdot if the legislation passes. Only just yesterday someone posted the full text to some MLK speech which was supposedly under copyright. I don't know if it was or not, only that it could have been and SOPA could have been used to shut the site down until it was removed. Imagine the hassle for mods, editors of dealing with trolls deliberately cutting and pasting links or text from various copyright sources because now Slashdot has a legal responsibility to clean itself up.
Sites like Slashdot really should be in the front lines because its in their own self interest that this law does not pass in its current form.
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.
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
"SOPA is about sites like......"
In the UK, counter-terrorism legislation introduced after the London tube bombings has been used by local councils to spy on householders recycling behaviour or usage of school catchment areas ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922427/Councils-warned-over-unlawful-spying-using-anti-terror-legislation.html ).
Just cos it is introduced for one purpose does not mean it wont be used for another.
"That's Slashdot's moderated democracy."
Then adjust your viewing threshold. Its your choice to view them all if you want, no-one's stopping you.