Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Can You Do About SOPA and PIPA?
Wednesday is here, and with it sites around the internet are going under temporary blackout to protest two pieces of legislation currently making their way through the U.S. Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia, reddit, the Free Software Foundation, Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, imgur, Mozilla, and many others have all made major changes to their sites or shut down altogether in protest. These sites, as well as technology experts (PDF) around the world and everyone here at Slashdot, think SOPA and PIPA pose unacceptable risks to freedom of speech and the uncensored nature of the internet. The purpose of the protests is to educate people — to let them know this legislation will damage websites you use and enjoy every day, despite being unrelated to the stated purpose of both bills. So, we ask you: what can you do to stop SOPA and PIPA? You may have heard the House has shelved SOPA, and that President Obama has pledged not to pass it as-is, but the MPAA and SOPA-sponsor Lamar Smith (R-TX) are trying to brush off the protests as a stunt, and Smith has announced markup for the bill will resume in February. Meanwhile, PIPA is still present in the Senate, and it remains a threat. Read on for more about why these bills are bad news, and how to contact your representative to let them know it.
Note: This will be the last story we post today until 6pm EST in protest of SOPA. Why is it bad?
The Stop Online Piracy Act is H.R.3261, and the Protect-IP Act is S.968.
The intent of both pieces of legislation is to combat online piracy, giving the Attorney General and the Department of Justice power to block domain name services and demand that links be stripped from sites not involved in piracy. The problem is that the legislation, as written, is vague and overly-broad. For one thing, it classifies internet sites as "foreign" or "domestic" based entirely on their domain name. A site hosted abroad like Wikileaks.org could be classified as "domestic" because the .org TLD is registered through a U.S. authority. By defining it as "domestic," Wikileaks would then fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. laws. Other provisions are worded even more poorly: in Section 103, SOPA lays out the definition for a "foreign infringing site" as one where "the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under [provisions relating to counterfeiting and copyright infringement]." The problematic word is facilitating, as it opens the door to condemning sites that simply link to other sites.
The most obvious implication of this is that search engines would suddenly be responsible for monitoring and policing everything they index. Google indexed its trillionth concurrent URL in 2008. Can you imagine how many people it would take to double check all of them for infringing content? But the job wouldn't end at simply looking at them — Google would have to continually monitor them. Google would also have to somehow keep track of the billions of new sites that spring up daily, many of which would be trying to avoid close scrutiny. Of course, it's an impossible task, so there would need to be automated solutions. Automation being imperfect, it would leave us with false positives. Or perhaps sites would need to be "approved" to be listed. Either way, we'd then be dealing with censorship on a massive scale, and the infringing sites themselves would continue to pop up.
But the problems don't end there; in fact, SOPA defines "Internet search engine" as a service that "searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet" and links to them. That's pretty much what we do here at Slashdot. It's also something the fine folks at Wikipedia and reddit do on a regular basis. The strength of all three sites is that they're heavily dependent on user-generated content. Every day at Slashdot, readers deposit hundreds and hundreds of links into our submissions bin. Thousands of comments are made daily. We have a system to surface the good content, but the chaff still exists. If we suddenly had a mandate to retroactively filter out all the links to potentially copyright-infringing sites in our database, we wouldn't have many options. We're talking about reviewing hundreds of thousands of submissions, and every comment on 117,000+ stories. And we're far from the biggest site around — imagine social networks needing to police their content, and all the privacy issues that would raise.
Small sites and new sites would be hurt, too. A website isn't a single, discrete entity that exists on its own. A new company starting up a site would have to worry about its webhost, registrar, content provider, ISP, etc. The legislation would also raise significant financial obstacles. New companies need investments, and that would be much less likely (PDF) if the company could be held liable for content uploaded by users. On top of that, if the site was unable to live up to the vague standards set by the government and the entertainment industry, they could be on the receiving end of a lawsuit, which would be expensive to fight even if they won (and such laws would never, ever be abused). It's hard to conceptualize the internet without noting its unrivaled growth, and SOPA/PIPA would surely stifle it.
This legislation hits near and dear to the hearts of many Slashdotters; if SOPA/PIPA pass, IT staff for companies small and large are going to have their hands full making sure they aren't opening themselves to legal action or government intervention. Mailing lists, used commonly and extensively among open source software projects, would be endangered. Code repositories would need be scoured for infringing content; the bill allows for the strangling of revenue sources if its anti-infringement rules aren't being met. VPN and proxy services become only questionably legal. The very nature of the open source community — as the EFF puts it, "decentralized, voluntary, international" — is not compatible with the burdens placed on internet sites by SOPA and PIPA.
What can we do?
So, what can we do about it? There are two big things: contact your representative, and spread the word. Slashdot readers, on the whole, are more technically-minded than the average internet user, so you're all in a position to share your wisdom with the less internet-savvy people in your life, and get them to contact their representative, too. Here's some useful information for doing so:
Propublica has a list of all SOPA/PIPA supporters and opponents.
Here is the Senate contact list and the House contact list.
You can also use the EFF's form-letter, the Stop American Censorship form-letter, or sign Google's petition.
If you don't live in the U.S., you can petition the State Department. (And yes, you have a dog in this fight.)
SOPAStrike has a list of companies participating in the protest, and this crowd-sourced Google Doc tracks companies that support the legislation. Tell those companies what you think.
Further reading: Wikipedia has left their SOPA and PIPA pages up. The EFF has a series of articles explaining in more depth what is wrong with the bills. Here are some protest letters written to Congress from human rights groups, law professors, and internet companies.
Go forth and educate.
Note: This will be the last story we post today until 6pm EST in protest of SOPA. Why is it bad?
The Stop Online Piracy Act is H.R.3261, and the Protect-IP Act is S.968.
The intent of both pieces of legislation is to combat online piracy, giving the Attorney General and the Department of Justice power to block domain name services and demand that links be stripped from sites not involved in piracy. The problem is that the legislation, as written, is vague and overly-broad. For one thing, it classifies internet sites as "foreign" or "domestic" based entirely on their domain name. A site hosted abroad like Wikileaks.org could be classified as "domestic" because the .org TLD is registered through a U.S. authority. By defining it as "domestic," Wikileaks would then fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. laws. Other provisions are worded even more poorly: in Section 103, SOPA lays out the definition for a "foreign infringing site" as one where "the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under [provisions relating to counterfeiting and copyright infringement]." The problematic word is facilitating, as it opens the door to condemning sites that simply link to other sites.
The most obvious implication of this is that search engines would suddenly be responsible for monitoring and policing everything they index. Google indexed its trillionth concurrent URL in 2008. Can you imagine how many people it would take to double check all of them for infringing content? But the job wouldn't end at simply looking at them — Google would have to continually monitor them. Google would also have to somehow keep track of the billions of new sites that spring up daily, many of which would be trying to avoid close scrutiny. Of course, it's an impossible task, so there would need to be automated solutions. Automation being imperfect, it would leave us with false positives. Or perhaps sites would need to be "approved" to be listed. Either way, we'd then be dealing with censorship on a massive scale, and the infringing sites themselves would continue to pop up.
But the problems don't end there; in fact, SOPA defines "Internet search engine" as a service that "searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet" and links to them. That's pretty much what we do here at Slashdot. It's also something the fine folks at Wikipedia and reddit do on a regular basis. The strength of all three sites is that they're heavily dependent on user-generated content. Every day at Slashdot, readers deposit hundreds and hundreds of links into our submissions bin. Thousands of comments are made daily. We have a system to surface the good content, but the chaff still exists. If we suddenly had a mandate to retroactively filter out all the links to potentially copyright-infringing sites in our database, we wouldn't have many options. We're talking about reviewing hundreds of thousands of submissions, and every comment on 117,000+ stories. And we're far from the biggest site around — imagine social networks needing to police their content, and all the privacy issues that would raise.
Small sites and new sites would be hurt, too. A website isn't a single, discrete entity that exists on its own. A new company starting up a site would have to worry about its webhost, registrar, content provider, ISP, etc. The legislation would also raise significant financial obstacles. New companies need investments, and that would be much less likely (PDF) if the company could be held liable for content uploaded by users. On top of that, if the site was unable to live up to the vague standards set by the government and the entertainment industry, they could be on the receiving end of a lawsuit, which would be expensive to fight even if they won (and such laws would never, ever be abused). It's hard to conceptualize the internet without noting its unrivaled growth, and SOPA/PIPA would surely stifle it.
This legislation hits near and dear to the hearts of many Slashdotters; if SOPA/PIPA pass, IT staff for companies small and large are going to have their hands full making sure they aren't opening themselves to legal action or government intervention. Mailing lists, used commonly and extensively among open source software projects, would be endangered. Code repositories would need be scoured for infringing content; the bill allows for the strangling of revenue sources if its anti-infringement rules aren't being met. VPN and proxy services become only questionably legal. The very nature of the open source community — as the EFF puts it, "decentralized, voluntary, international" — is not compatible with the burdens placed on internet sites by SOPA and PIPA.
What can we do?
So, what can we do about it? There are two big things: contact your representative, and spread the word. Slashdot readers, on the whole, are more technically-minded than the average internet user, so you're all in a position to share your wisdom with the less internet-savvy people in your life, and get them to contact their representative, too. Here's some useful information for doing so:
Propublica has a list of all SOPA/PIPA supporters and opponents.
Here is the Senate contact list and the House contact list.
You can also use the EFF's form-letter, the Stop American Censorship form-letter, or sign Google's petition.
If you don't live in the U.S., you can petition the State Department. (And yes, you have a dog in this fight.)
SOPAStrike has a list of companies participating in the protest, and this crowd-sourced Google Doc tracks companies that support the legislation. Tell those companies what you think.
Further reading: Wikipedia has left their SOPA and PIPA pages up. The EFF has a series of articles explaining in more depth what is wrong with the bills. Here are some protest letters written to Congress from human rights groups, law professors, and internet companies.
Go forth and educate.
Making sure that everyone knows what is happening and what is at stake is probably the most useful thing anyone can do.
Palm trees and 8
Include a big campaign contribution with your letter if you want to make sure it's not just thrown in the trash or just added to the pile.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why is slashdot ignoring the blackout?
With so many links to questionable content, this illegal news source seems like a hive of crime.
...work on ways to bypass SOPA and PIPA. Congress doesn't care that it will censor the internet, because they're the ones who will be doing the censoring. Censorship always makes perfect sense to the censors
Creating undetectable breaches of such unenforceable laws is the way out of this mess and those workarounds might just work in China too. So you'll be saving the internet and advancing human rights in China all at the same time.
http://xkcd.com/865/
Stop SOPA and PIPA now!!!
There was a time when Slashdot was at the forefront of such kind of fights against "the man" (e.g., Sony Rootkit fiasco).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
This morning on NPR's Marketplace Morning Report, there was a footnote similar to a few other mass media articles I've seen. They pointed out that if necessary, you could use Google's "cached copy" of a site like Wikipedia, if you are otherwise blocked by the SOPA front page. It's like a digital scab on the picket line.
Then it struck me: isn't this advice a sort of inducement to piracy, and therefore a strong statement about SOPA's odious nature? If a site blocks its own publication of data, say, Sony/EMG/WarnerBros takes down its own webpage, isn't relying on a third party copy to get that content without their authorization just another form of "stealing" in their eyes? Wikipedia content is under some copyleft premise, but I don't think that changes the point: there are times that everyday reasonable activities can be construed as piracy in ways that a law or a technology can never adequately distinguish.
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How about for the rest of us who aren't in America?
I'd really like to help, since if this passes it's only a matter of time before it's in the UK too.
What can we non-US citizens do to help?
I would have expected the tech-savvy slashdot to do something similar to what google and reddit have done in protest. Why not?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
God knows, I don't know how many times a sales guy, or some piece of legislation, proposed something that would have been awesome in theory but that was just totally unmanageable in practice. On more than a few occasions I have seen these features go into production over my protests, only to see them die a rapid death when management realized how much time it was taking to keep them up.
Having said that, I'm also an author and copyright owner and my book can be found on multiple pirate and other sites around the Internet. I would love the ability to press a button or fill out a form and have the link removed from every index.
To be honest, I don't know how many sales this is costing me, but not knowing isn't a particularly comfortable feeling. Maybe the big boys can just blow off a certain amount of piracy, but I'm still very small and every sale, or lost sale, makes a difference.
...and got a response saying that the link did not complete because the site was down in protest over SOPA.
Isn't that shooting yourself in the foot a bit?
I listened to a clip of senate hearings on NPR this morning. After a stream of warnings by PIPA opponents, Patrick Leahy (D) said something to the effect of "If this bill is as bad as you say, it won't get five votes. If it protects content providers from piracy, it will pass easily."
Way to ignore the point. He is admitting the rest of the country can burn as long as content industries are happy. That is the definition of special interest control.
That when the radio was talking about companies like Facebook, Google, and Wikipedia protesting legislation put to Congress by the Motion Picture Industry that there is nothing that I can do. US government isn't much about people anymore. I have no clue how SOPA got this far.
The only correct thing to do is to abolish all copyrights and patents and to prevent complete decay and decline of the political and economic systems.
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I am posting the links to the comments here, because they apply to each and every situation and you can follow those threads if you are wondering as to how /. crowd responds to the idea, and it's not favourable here.
The reason why /. crowd doesn't like the idea of abolishing copyrights and patents is due to high degree of hypocrisy. How many people want to see government picking up the bills for other types of failing businesses, like stores, manufacturers, miners, medical clinics, transport companies, telecoms, banks, insurance, etc.etc.?
The point is that copyrights and patents are standing on the way of innovation and invention and economic progress rather than helping it in any way.
In one of the threads I mentioned the case of Louis C.K. - he didn't need the copyright laws to protect him from anything, he is not going after people downloading his show for free, but he is offering to download his show from his site for $5 a pop and he made over million bucks by now. In that thread people argued that copyright still applies to Louis C.K. work, but they missed the point - he specifically offered a non-DRMed version and he said that he understood that people would be sharing his show on torrents and download sites, and it didn't bother him, it was a business risk he was willing to take.
Just like a new restaurant owner takes a business risk of opening his business in some specific location, sinking his capital into it (or borrowed capital) and risking losing the investment and time it took to build up that investment capital. Same thing with somebody writing a book or a play or a song or a shooting a movie or a show or painting a picture, whatever, it takes time to build up capital to open a restaurant, it takes time to write a book, it takes time (money) to make a show.
It does not matter to the market how you do it - you shouldn't be protected from failure in the market by government, nobody should be protected that way, it distorts the market, and just like with protections of money (default on gold promise in 1971), protection of mortgages (insurance by FHA, F&F,) FDIC, any type of protection by government, it all turns sour and goes bad and hurts the economy.
The only correct way is to let the market function, those who can rely on trade secrets should do so, but this encourages competition if there is no government protection against failure.
If Louis C.K. sucked and his shows weren't popular, he would have lost his investment. SO WHAT? Instead he proved that his shows are worth paying $5 for even with many people downloading the shows for free he still made enough money to continue working that way. His business model is sound, the people who believe their business model must be protected by government regulations are wrong and the government shouldn't be serving any company. Government for the people, by the people, of the people, right?
So it's hight of hypocrisy to be PRO-copyright and PRO-patent while complaining about bank bailouts also with public money! After all, the copyright police (FBI and such), that's also public money. The prison system where people can go for violation of copyright also is public money.
Many don't see the problem with their hypocrisy, but they also do not want SOPA and PIPA.
Well you can't have copyrights and patents and NOT have SOPA and PIPA eventually.
Just like you can't have abolition of the Cons
You can't handle the truth.
No. Instead of being reactive, we need to be active.
Reactive is to fight laws. Active is to change laws and constitution, so SOPAs won't be possible in the future.
Businesses should not be taken down, harmed, punished, etc other than by court decision.
One does not have a right to go to police and shut down the business without court order. It started long time ago when health inspectors were given a right to shut down businesses (remember Friends episode?) and people let it be in the same name of security and safety.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
What Can You Do About SOPA and PIPA?
Take SOPA/PIPA seriously. By that I mean if YOU, or a company is going to protest, then do more than have a small link at the bottom of your screen (like Google). Or do absolutely NOTHING, like Slashdot. Yes I know the majority of people who read Slashdot are aware of the issues, but to anybody who pays attention it looks as if (companies like) Slashdot don't care; because they don't even have a banner add voicing their opposition to aggressive Internet police states. I read Slashdot everyday and I haven't heard anything from Management about any opposition.
The power here lies not with businesses, but with the individual (i.e. People Power); if religious fanatics can get companies to stop advertising the reality TV show All American Muslim, then certainly the majority of normal people can get companies to stop supporting Internet censorship and an Internet police state.
People need to take this seriously. People usually panic after it is already too late. As a recent example; the crew of the Italian cruise liner that sank only told people to abandon ship after about an hour after it started sinking and after the ship already started to keel over. Of course I could point out Nazi Germany; most people didn't complain because most people weren't effected until the allies started bombing residential neighborhoods in Berlin. Sometimes it takes a kick in the ass to get people to realize that their government's policies are evil.
Ordinary people need to email their friends and families about this issue, and they need to include links to their representatives telling them to oppose these overwhelmingly evil measures. They need to use Facebook, instant messaging and anything else to communicate the urgency of the issue. Also as important people need to remind the public NOT TO BELIEVE WHAT GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY ARE SAYING. This is important. People are continually told that repressive measures are only for the good of the country. This is a lie and people need to be exposed to the fact that they are being lied to.
People need to be told that this is NOT a copyright issue, but an excuse where governments and large corporations can have unprecedented control over YOUR communications. They need to be told that this measure is used to enforce corporate power and greed, and that ordinary artists, like usual will not be the benefactors of "copyright" enforcement, but only the people who actually own and control the copyrights (which is usually a corporate entity) will benefit. These measures will further erode copyright by giving the companies with access to lawyers and politicians an unfair advantage over smaller companies and the consumer. They need to be told not to believe Rupert Murdock because he is not trustworthy. They need to be told not to believe Sony because they are not trustworthy. They need to be told not to believe the Big Lie that congress is being paid big money to support:
Reference:
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ol56z/reddit_founder_alexis_ohanian_on_cnbc_why_is_it/
Vote for Ron Paul. Register Republican so you can vote for him in the primaries. You can unregister afterward if you want.
Ron Paul: Tells The Dangers Of SOPA And PIPA
Ron Paul on SOPA: They Want to Take Over the Internet!
Why's The Media Shafting Ron Paul, And Ignoring NDAA & SOPA Dangers?
Or just DuckDuckGo "Ron Paul SOPA" to get many, many more examples.
Last week my congresscritter held a public information session, which I attended. He is hard-core Tea Party. During the q&a I told him that SOPA was a mistake and should be stopped. He seemed to appreciate the problems with SOPA and gave a very similar reply to the one from the White House.
I think is is important that more people visibly communicate with their representatives that they are opposed to such laws, and that the people are closely watching Congress.
The really sad part was the reaction of the majority of the audience, average age estimated in the 60's. They either had no clue at all, or felt it was a good thing that the government was controlling the internet.
An elderly gentleman accosted me afterwards and said that he had been "hacked" and that if I were ever hacked I would support the government clamping down in the internet. I tried to explain SOPA to him, but it was a lost cause.
I'm being serious. Make a super-PAC and use it in the next election season against people who introduce or push bills like SOPA and PIPA. Attack politicians where it hurts: Election year.
It's easy to end an e-mail letter, but those aren't as effective as a personally written letter. In order of effectiveness, petitions are the lowest, followed by e-mail form letters, followed by personally written e-mails, followed by mailed form letters, followed by phone calls, followed by personally written mailed letters. Personally visiting your Congressman's office is also highly effective (this is probably less possible with your Senator, unless you live in a small population state, but Representatives often have offices that the public can easily visit and offer feedback). The most effective thing to do, if you don't have a lot of money (large cash donations are VERY effective), is to become a volunteer (assuming your Rep is someone that you can get behind on most issues and you'd like to see reelected) and get plugged in. It's not as difficult as you'd think. Once your Rep knows you by name, and potentially respects your opinion, you can slip some info in about tech issues from time to time. Of course, this does take a lot of effort and time commitment, which is why most people won't be doing it - but if you've got the time, and want to make a difference, it's definitely something you can do.
Check out Treesandthings.com for offbeat news
I can tell you that Lamar Smith does not care what you think. Congress has been paid $96,000,000,000 dollars by the MSM and Hollywood to enact this censorship. Money talks, the other thing walks.
I am an advocate of copyright. I feel it is a very effective mechanism for channeling revenue to those who advance science and the useful arts.
We have overstepped the bounds of cost effective copyright grants and enforcement. We have exceeded the efficient level of enforcement, and I suspect we have exceeded the efficient level of revenue channeling. We have passed more copyright legislation in the past fifteen years than at any other time in our history. More than during the advent of the printing press, the radio, the cassette tape, or any other disruptive technology. We are not balancing the potential value of new technology against the perceived cost of adapting copyright to the new reality. Moreover, the legislation is not working. It is not significantly inhibiting copyright, but it is harming the progress of new business models and entrepreneurship. It is not rational to pass ever more extreme legislation when what has gone before is not working.
We are channeling a lot of revenue into copyright holders, and that money is coming back in lobbying. That cycle is self-catalyzing, and it has gone beyond what is cost effective. It is harming our ability to compete in the global marketplace, and is a cycle that is hostile to our national economic interests.
It is time to demand a moratorium on new copyright law, coupled with a serious research effort on the cost effectiveness of copyright enforcement. That research should have the explicit objective of answering the question: "How much can we reduce government interference in the market while still advancing the progress of science and the useful arts?"
Failure to do so should be seen as an act of aggression against our economy by those who are benefiting from this government fiat monopoly, and should be met with total opposition.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The bills are massively unpopular on the internet but we are still losing the spin war on this. The blackouts are being covered on main stream media in droves (a good thing!), but every MSM reference that i have seen describes the bills as the 'anti-piracy' SOPA/PIPA bills. Lots of people, even many of us on this site, might support bills that are just anti-piracy... in the head of many, anti-piracy is a good thing.
We can lose hearts and minds if these bills are seen as anti-piracy. Get the word out that we don't object to these bills because they are anti-piracy, we object to these bills because they are anti-internet!
The internet breaks with these bills. Great firewall of America type broken. That is what we are against! Go spread the word.
Thanks, troll. I actually had the opposite problem - I was wondering if they chickened out on the blackout. I guess they figure anyone savvy enough to use NoScript is already aware of these bills.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
The only thing you can do against the likes of these laws that harm the public in order to cater to short-term special interests is to ensure that your elective representatives answer to you and only you (plural), so you could easily kick them out of office AND INTO PRISON when they begin to contemplate such shenanigans.
To achieve that you have to first vote out all the D's and the R's and replace them with people that are willing to criminalize corruption to an extent that will make premeditated murder look like jaywalking in comparison, revoke corporate personhood, make corporate executives personally responsible for the actions of the respective corporations and in general restore sanity to all branches of government.
In other words: it will never happen.
The best way to get the attention of congress is to have one of the IP stooges lose an election.
Identify one of the prominent supporters of SOPA/PIPA who is weak in his district and support his challenger in the next primary and general election.
When a congressman loses a seat for taking on a third-rail issue, the surviving congressmen remember that for decades.
That's what AIPAC does. You don't see any congressmen criticizing Israel, do you?
Strategically, it would be best to attack somebody who is a jerk on other issues too; in other words, an all-around jerk.
The only problem is that it's hard in this country to defeat a well-financed incumbent, no matter how much he sells out the interests of his constituents.
But it does happen. I give democracy about 50% odds.
Or you could, you know, grow a set of balls and engage with the political system to make the country better.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
but I agree with the sentiment. Right now I'm waiting for my kid to finish getting ready to school, so I've got time to post to /. . After that it's off to my day job for 9 hours. Right now a lobbyist for SOPA is doing the same thing, but he's going to spend 9 hours fighting for it. Oh, at the end of my 9 hour shift I'm going to study programming in hopes of getting a better job.
If I'm going to fight SOPA, PIPA or any of the other horrid things the 1% has in store for me, then I need more leisure time. That's what the rich were talking about in the 1800s when they said 'Idle hands are the devil's plaything'. That said, the 1% are working hard to make sure I don't get it. They're busing Unions, dividing Americans against one another based on race, creed & sexual orientation. They're scaring us with terrorists. They're fighting on multiple fronts, and I can't get the time to fight on one. This, folks, is why I'm a socialist in favor of 'Basic Income' (google it when wikipedia comes back up).
I guess one of the really big problems is, SOPA is just a symptom of a larger, more complex problem. Americans are big on simple answers to complex problems. That's why George Bush jr resonated so well with them. How are we suppose to fight when we don't even know there's a war going on?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The companies that WILL be hurt by these laws should unite and back candidates as replacements for the supporters of these bills. Media has always been a significant part of U.S. policies. It is time for the new media to take an active role. It is a duty of an American to oppose an individual entering into an elected position if they know the individual is misrepresenting Americas best interest. Unfortunately, when there is no other candidate opposition is fruitless. Presenting a candidate to replace these people degrading freedom, padding their re-election trove, and making corporate desires the priority of American policy, does not have to cost lots of money. If the large media sites on the web were to find and support replacement candidates the public would rally to vote them into office. Put online polls to real use. Use them to find the right people to run. Put banners to real use. Promote those people.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
As others have said, there is one major presidential candidate who is against SOPA: Ron Paul. I don't personally support Mr. Paul because of unrelated issues, but it's a fact he is opposed to SOPA, to the point of joining the blackout.
Slightly off-topic but if you are asking "what can I do" and you want to get at the root cause, not the symptom, you might want to check out the Move to Amend.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Most likely, no.
If a site was censored because of SOPA, several things could happen. They could be cut off from any electronic financial transactions. No online sales or donations. No ad revenue. They couldn't afford to stay up, unless people started mailing cash and checks. Even still, they could lose their bank accounts, therefor being unable to even cash the checks.
The IP, or even the whole ISP could be blackholed by the US Gov't. That would stop anyone who's network traffic transits the United States from reaching the site anywhere in the world. Blackholing the ISP would mean that every site hosted there would disappear. No amount of circumventing DNS would help you.
Any cooperative nation can do the same thing. I would suspect several European nations would pick it up fairly quickly. As it expands, I would not be surprised to see them start blocking large swaths of the Internet as "illegal" and "untrustworthy". Those "untrustworthy" areas would be countries that don't cooperate with the US.
I would expect that Slashdot would be taken down fairly quickly. They illegally copy story content. It's legal under "Fair Use" right now. It wouldn't be after SOPA. What people put in the comments are definitely illegal. That would result in Geeknet being entirely blocked. So enjoy Slashdot while you can.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You do now. Actually, I'll give you two.
The runner up story is Susan Boyle. When Wikipedia comes off blackout, go look her up and check the sales records - some such highest selling new artist in X years.
But let's do your story.
If you're gutsy, you'll post a link to your book and dedicate it "A gift to protest SOPA". Pick a CC license, I suggest "Attribution Only" (So that people can't replace your name, but all told, people are usually pretty good at keeping original artist names on their copies.) Put a rider in "Since this copy originated on a special post, please let me know if this copy inspires you to buy it". Give us an address to send checks/payments to, etc.
Or, if you are still a little squeamish, send *me* all that info which I won't re-share, but I'll report my results. My email is "not obfuscated" so send it along!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Example of how third party website interpret SOPA and PIPA:
http://www.infowars.com/why-we-must-stop-sopa/
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
While we're on the general topic, I'd like to remind folks about another bill being considered, the Research Works Act. Previously covered on Slashdot here, the act is being pushed by the journal industry, and would reverse the current requirement that papers resulting from federally funded research be freely available to the public.
Can we go back to the good old days of using IP numbers instead of text string that goes thru a DNS server. I think it might be harder for governments to censor that.
I'm sure APK is unaffected by all this...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
to do that, he has to be rich. to be rich, he has to play along. noone can put on a lifelong masquerade to hide his/her true intentions of eventually fighting against the rich, whereas playing along with them. you have to be one of them in heart and soul to play along.
Read radical news here
From their page on SOPA
Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?
Yes. During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.
Proponents of SOPA have a 10-word sound byte saying why SOPA is "great:" "this bill will stop online piracy." What we need is a 10-word statement of why the whole idea of SOPA, PIPA, and the like is disastrous. How about:
This bill gives law-enforcement powers to Big Media.
I am sure someone can improve on that. Please, do.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
By "engage" I didn't mean run for office. I meant first and foremost to cast an informed vote; to write to one's representatives, perhaps to join advocacy groups like, for this issue, the EFF or EPIC; maybe march in protests, that sort of thing. Those do require some time and commitment but they certainly don't require wealth.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
This doesn't really surprise me.
One of the most interesting things about the interwebs getting excited about any pending legislation is how few people bother to read the actual text of the bills they're complaining about.
Thomas.gov will have the complete text of any pending legislation, plus modifications and annotations as it moves through the legislative process. Including little notes like "this is the version sent to the President for signature"...
The search function isn't too friendly with acronyms (searching for SOPA yields nothing), but if you can type out the popular name of the bill (Stop Online Piracy Act), you'll go right to it.
For that matter, if you know that the first word of the name is "Stop", you should be able to find it (that's how I did it last night - amazing the number of Bills with "Stop" as the first word in the name).
And SOPA is neither long nor complicated. You can read the entire text in two minutes.
So WHY CAN'T THE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT AT LEAST READ IT FIRST AND MAKE VALID COMPLAINTS? Instead of that sort of idiocy...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The first step in ANY copyright infringement discussion should be for the owners to offer a way to automate the checking of their copyrights. Perhaps a "whois" of copyright owners... maybe "whoowns"; whatever. Short of this, I see these bills and their kin as nonstarters.
Instead of bribing our elected officials, spend that money creating a database of registered copyright owners, their content, dates covered, etc... and guilt these companies into checking against it. As a bonus to the rest of us, it would also be nice to see what content is no longer under copyright.
***** START RANT *****
I sent letters to my representatives over a month ago. Two never replied, and one of my senators replied with a canned response stating that she is a supported of PIPA and that despite my concerns, she knows what's best for me and the economy, even if that involves compromising the infrastructure of the Internet, negatively impacting security, and infringing on the rights of United States citizens. So, to paraphrase, we need a lobby with lots of money, or we can go p*ss up a rope.
***** END RANT *****
-h
constrain communications of those your consider enemies?
The Declaration of Independence expresses a feedback loop "Of the People, By the People, For the People". The founders recognized it is the people right and DUTY to keep their government in check. But they also foresaw the probability of government to deteriorate and fail the people. And they provided the people with instructions to follow in doing their duty as U.S. Citizens, to put off the current government and replace it with governance that will follow the feedback loop the founders intended.
For this feedback loop to work, the people need information about what their government is doing. Bradley Manning showed intent to make such information available to the people. Wikileaks made similar information available to the people and the Occupy movement is providing the government with feedback from the people.
There is plenty evidence the government is violating the founders intended feedback loop. When any system requiring a feedback loop for verification on staying on course, fails... lost and in this case its clear skerd happens.
The government lives in its own world, has its own laws, even Washington DC is separated from the Union, its own country more or less (like Vatican City, separate from Italy, and London separate from England). The Government has its own benefits, retirement, medical, etc...all different than The People that are supposed to be a part "Of the People, By the People, For the People".
Addiction and what the addicted will do in denial and to maintain their addiction, and regarding the government, military command is certainly included.
So yeah, military tactic of constraining free communication of the enemy......they have been identifying as "The People."
The Founders of the United States gave us, the people, instructions to follow in doing our duty. See the Declaration of Independence for it.
It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information use their services.
The full response from MPAA makes fill with the rage of a thousand suns. I finally saw some media coverage on SOPA. It was on CNN, it stated that wikipedia was having a blackout in protest of Sopa but was immediately followed up with Time Warner who owns CNN support this bill. It took her less than 10 seconds to report and then she quickly moved on to the next subject.
Foot placed squarely in mouth since 1983.
PIPA is still alive.
40 (FORTY!) senators are co-sponsors of PIPA, the last time I checked.
Write them. Don't email them. Don't waste your time on online petitions. Write a letter, and then send it by **FAX** to your senator.
Why fax? because snail-mail gets quarantined, email is too easy to ignore, but an old-fashioned piece of paper is something bureaucrats understand.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
And before someone makes the argument that they can make a website poof, if you actually read the legislation, that is a last measure when there has been no cooperation with the people involved in the matter. The decisions can be challenged in court just fine, there is nothing that says you cannot do that, just like with the DMCA.
You get 5 days to contest it before payment processors are barred from doing business with you and search engines must stop acknowledging your existence. That alone is alarming to me.
Even worse, however, is the provision that gives immunity to those who take that action with just reasonable belief of infringement, i.e. the same requirement placed on DMCA takedowns. Know of anyone who's ever gotten even a slap on the wrist for sending out abusive takedowns? Yeah, me neither.
DMCA is already abusive as hell in that fraudulent claims can be made and the only recourse the attacked individual has is a counter-claim that might not even get the content reinstated. There is no mechanism for holding those who abuse the system accountable. These bills would give this already broken system even more teeth. In the face of all that, what about the response seems hyperbolic to you?
They don't need to go completely black. Duckduckgo.com has a prominent link and XKCD did something as well.
And XKCD currently only shows one panel unless you go to a specific one. Unfortunately I can't figure out what number it is for posterity.
I hope that you just wanted to post quickly without thinking about what you said:
I totally believe that if you produce something you should be paid...
I just produced this post, pay me.
A lot of "art" is produced with claimed values without anybody at any time offering to pay any amount at all for it. Statue goes missing with a value in the hundred thousands because that is what the "artist" claimed so that is what the value must be...
In the real world the model is very different, you get paid, so you produce something. There is a direct link between labor and pay and it is not for person doing the labor to just do the labor and claim the pay they want. A plumber does not get to claim a magic number for his work that he did without someone asking him to do it.
A lot of MPAA/RIAA problem is that artist have gotten used to being payed insane amounts for not doing very much and they want more of it. Money for every blank CD found because some might contain their content. What about where I bought their CD and made a copy of it for my own use only as a back-up? I still got to pay extra?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's why this is a particularly good time (right now, not November) to strike back at the people who are most responsible for it, rather than just the bills. It'll only be about one third as effective in the Senate, but for the House, every one of them needs to lose their party's nomination and not be on the ballots in November (unless they want to run as independents). This is something Democrats and Republicans can work together on, as such a cleanup would effect both of them about equally and doesn't really have any sort of partisan ideological component.
If we establish a rule that pushing this kind of nonsense can only be done by sacrificing the next election, it'll help a lot. And eventually the revolving list of supporters will all be junior reps without important committee positions to make it happen. SOPA only got as far as it did, because its top dog has so much seniority (since 1987!!?! WTF is wrong with you, TX-21?).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Sen. Chuck Schumer's phone line is jammed. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's phone line is jammed, and her contact page is offline. On her Facebook page, the line of comments on the issue is endless and they're 100% opposed to PIPA/SOPA.
As somebody that's watched this country go off the rails the last 30 years in a row, though, in my heart I think the American people need to send a much stronger message to DC, like by burning that town to the ground and salting the earth afterward.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The thing is, you have to go to court simply to RESTORE your access. Not to protect it in the first place.
In the mean time, you could be down for days or weeks.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It turns out eternal vigilance is actually pretty hard.
Dear Mr.[redacted],
Thank you for contacting me about the internet streaming of copyrighted material. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.
On May 12, 2011, Senator Leahy (D-VT) introduced S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act. While I am supportive of the goals of the bill, I am deeply concerned that the definitions and the means by which the legislation seeks to accomplish these goals will have unintended consequences and hurt innovation, job creation, and threaten online speech and security. On November 17, 2011, I signed a letter along with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) objecting to the bill as it is currently written.
On December 17, 2011, Senator Wyden introduced the "Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade" (OPEN) Act (S. 2029), of which I am an original co-sponsor. The bill has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee, where it is currently awaiting further review. The OPEN Act is a more effective approach to stopping foreign web sites that are found to be primarily and willfully used to infringe intellectual property rights. The OPEN Act builds on the existing legal framework used by the International Trade Commission for addressing unfair acts in the importation of articles into the United States, or in their sale for importation, or sale within the United States after importation.
Our trade laws have yet to catch up to deal with the global digital economy. The OPEN Act recognizes that the Internet has created new opportunities for foreign products to reach the U.S. market and that there is little difference between downloading a pirated movie from a foreign website and importing a counterfeit movie DVD from a foreign company. For those foreign web sites that are determined after an investigation to be primarily and willfully infringing, the International Trade Commission will issue a "Cease and Desist" order. The "Cease and Desist" order may also be served on financial intermediaries that provide services to that foreign web site, compelling financial payment processors and online advertising providers to cease doing business with the foreign site in question. This would cut off financial incentives for this illegal activity and deter these unfair imports from reaching the U.S. market.
The OPEN Act addresses the same challenges as the PROTECT IP Act, while protecting freedom of speech, innovation, and security on the Internet. The challenge of rogue web sites is one that many nation's face. The United State has always been seen as a leader on Internet issues. Laws we establish in the United States regarding the Internet are likely to be used as models around the world. And because the Internet is global in nature, it is important that we carefully consider how the laws and policies we adopt in this area may be received and translated by other countries.
Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts on this matter. You may also be interested in signing up for periodic updates for Washington State residents. If you are interested in subscribing to this update, please visit my website at http://cantwell.senate.gov./ Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance.
Sincerely,
Maria Cantwell
United States Senator
For future correspondence with my office, please visit my website at
http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/
Honestly, if they're in violation, take them to court. Have their access revoked THERE. Via court order.
Doing "Shoot first and ask questions later" is ridiculous.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
.
When an Internet client connects to the Internet it puts out a request to locate any local seeder/trackers, and then requests from them any addresses that the client requires. The dynamic seeder/trackers split up the domain information to organize the domain data efficiently, as to ensure the proper data replication in case of network partitioning or link failures. The client request is returned if found in its cache, otherwise it is forwarded based on the current domain mapping between servers. Before trusting the returned DNS record the client would first need to verify that DNS record via the sites published PKI public key.
Without a single centralized point of control there would be no way to 'take a domain down' once the information is published to the cloud. The weakest link would be at the ISP's Internet connection, but then the initial DNS injection point need not be at the same location, as any client even on a dialup connection could inject the initial announcement packets if it contains the properly signed data.
Yes, I realize there have been some p2p efforts in the past, but its now time to take this seriously.
Round up some web billionaires and get them to lobby the hell out of congress. If you can't get the money out of politics then use money as a weapon the same way Hollywood and the Music Industry does. "Going Dark" is insufferably silly because it gives ordinary anonymous slackers the impression they are doing something while in fact it accomplishes nothing. You'd be better off selling ribbon magnets.
Update: The gentleman did in fact email me a copy, so now it's my turn to decide what happens next.
A couple of notes:
A Legit issue underneath all the snow-job the **AA is churning out is that there is indeed a longer gestation period for "non-traditional sales" so on purpose I "won't pay today". (Otherwise that's just more of an inverted retail transaction.)
Also this situation is different because "the clock starts today" whereas the poster's point was that he couldn't figure out the "correlation - causation" link between unknown downloads vs. sales.
This feels like an important project for me and my stance on copyright, so everyone, watch for further posts later in other threads and we'll see where it all goes. Mr. Author, please pay extra care not to "get impatient" here. I have some ideas but the time passing is in fact part of the point, so that it doesn't just become astroturfing.
See you all In Another Thread!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There is at least one other major presidential candidate who is against SOPA: Barack Obama.
This is exactly why we need to support and vote for Ron Paul.
He's the only politician that stands against crap like this and will reduce the power of the Fed.
Al the other candidates are just empty suits that will be the bitches of big corps, and who support SOPA and PIPA.
It's not important just that people KNOW. They much DO SOMETHING.
The number TWO thing they can do is take up the Staff time of CongressCritters. The number ONE thing they can do, is convince those CongressCritters that they will vote against them (put them out of office)
The best way to do either of these is to call up the CongressCritters office and demand to talk to the appropriate staffer. Make it clear that you intent to vote against their boss if their boss votes for SOPA. You can even add on, that you'll explain this to all your relatives and friends, and actively campaign against their candidate.
The squeaky-ist, noisy-ist wheel gets the oil. In reality, a very small organized group can quickly block almost any legislation using such tactics, especially in an era when elections are won by narrow margins.
As far as organization goes, you've got to actually have it. You can't just post things to the internet and pray. You need lists. You need circles. You need one person, checking on ten people, checking on another ten. You ask, can you get 50 people to call? Who are they? Did you call them to make sure they called?
Just like in the office, you get things by actually monitoring; a "political machine."
Al Franken supports. I would've never thought.
http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/
Waiting for you by the bridge
Given the legal terror tactics employed by the MPAA and the RIAA, would it be possible to get both organizations labeled and subsequently banned as terrorist organizations?
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
The way to keep these bills from resurfacing like the creature in a bad Hollywood horror film is to punish the senators and congressmen who signed on as supporters. Because you know the big media will be pushing for something new as soon as the hubbub over SOPA and PIPA dies down.
Punish means voting for their opponents, sending them money, even campaigning for them, and, this is the important part, telling the jerkwads in Congress you are doing it and why. The one thing that outweighs their greed for bribes (campaign donations), is fear of getting voted out entirely, and the gravy train stopping.
On the other hand, if they come out against these laws, thank them, and say how much you will support them in the future. Make censoring the Net a toxic subject, so the next time the media come knocking (and they will), they get told to get the hell out.
The UK should have thought about that when it insisted on signing the Berne Convention!
While your point is valid the treaty in question is the US-UK extradition treaty, not the Berne Convention. As for "the UK" the only defence we have is that it was the government who signed it and we kicked it out at the last election. With the financial collapse people have been talking about the failure of capitalism but my concern is that this is just a symptom of the underlying failure of western democracy to provide governments that act in the best interests of the people as evidenced by the UK-US extradition treaty, the financial collapse and SOPA/PIPA. At least with the latter you may have caught it in time to do something about it but the overall trend is concerning.
I've burnt out my rage gland now... and have started thinking positively about what the post-SOPA Internet might look like.
It occurs to me that SOPA relies very heavily on the Domain Name system that the Internet uses so heavily - primarily so that we don't need to remember IP addresses - but also, to a lesser degree, so that we don't need to have fixed IPs.
Once SOPA is entrenched, and domains start getting blocked - either as legitimate takedowns, witch-hunts, or corporate espionage (I'll be expecting Samsung and Apple to be off the air within days of SOPA's activation) - a more dynamic website that doesn't rely on a DNS, and that has a flexible IP seems to be the logical approach.
Or perhaps some very powerful proxy servers based outside US soil... will SOPA have the ability to block them when they are transports and not hosts? Perhaps a combination of a proxy server with its own naming/IP translation table?
One thing I am sure of: People will get what they want from the Internet regardless of what the legislators say.
The first great cyber-civil war appears to be commencing... how does the right to bear arms relate to that?
Senator Marco Rubio just annonced on his Facebook page that he's withdrawing his support for the Protect IP Act. (Credit to Steve from HardOCP.com's forum for the story).
Therefore, I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor. Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet.
I also agree with Steve from HardOCP, he would have been more credible if he have done this before today
Elok