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January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Is protest an “abuse of power”?
SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an “abuse of power”
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has looked at tomorrow’s “Internet blackout” in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and it sees only a “gimmick,” a “stunt,” “hyperbole,” “a dangerous and troubling development,” an “irresponsible response,” and an “abuse of power.”
“Wikipedia, reddit, and others are going dark to protest the legislation, while sites like Scribd and Google will also protest. In response, MPAA chief Chris Dodd wheeled out the big guns and started firing the rhetoric machine-gun style.
“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.”
Can I interrupt for a moment? Thanks. When you complain that opponents didn’t “come to the table to find solutions”, do you mean that we didn’t give NINETY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to congress like the MPAA? Or do you mean that we didn’t come to the one hearing that Lamar Smith held, where opponents of SOPA were refused an opportunity to comment? Help me out, here, Chris Dodd, because I’m really trying hard to understand you.
“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.”
Oh ha ha. Ho. Ho. The MPAA talking about “skewing the facts to incite” anyone is just too much.
“A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.”
Except for the part where this is completely false, it’s a valid point.
“It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”
Riiiiiiight. Protesting to raise awareness of terrible legislation that will destroy the free and open Internet is an abuse of power, but buying NINETY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS worth of congressional votes is just fine.
I’m so disappointed in Chris Dodd. He was a pretty good senator, wrote some bills (like Dodd/Frank) that are genuinely helping people, and is going to be on the wrong side of every argument as head of the MPAA. What a wasted legacy.
January 17, 2012
“While U.S. television news outlets have largely ignored the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act during their evening news and opinion programming, they have covered repeatedly and at-length Tim Tebow, Casey Anthony, Kim Kardashian’s divorce, the British Royal Family, and Alec Baldwin being kicked off an airplane.”
Hard to fight this bullshit when all forms of TV news are official “supporters” of killing what you love about the internet. These are the same people that wanted to kill the VCR in the 80s because it gave people too much control of the media they consumed. Now these corporations want to monopolize your net and all congress knows about net technology is that it’s a series of tubes - as parodied in this Daily Show clip. More here.
(via mizred)
January 13, 2012
December 19, 2011
Lamar Smith is a cheap date
How much has it cost the entertainment industry to convince Rep Lamar Smith to introduce and ram through SOPA, which will cost the American economy billions, which will nuke the games, microprocessor, search, and other high tech companies in his Texas district? A mere $50K a year for 10 years. You know, it’s one thing to be a sellout; but to sell out so cheaply — man, have some self-respect.
(Source: azspot)
December 18, 2011
Stop SOPA
RT URGENT The Avaaz team STOP #SOPA
Avaaz is delivering our messages directly to senior White House officials in less than 24 hours - let’s reach 1 million signatures before then! We’re nearly there — sign now and share with everyone
Dear friends,
Right now, the US Congress is debating a law that would give them the power to censor the world’s Internet — creating a blacklist that could target YouTube, WikiLeaks and even groups like Avaaz!
Under the new law, the US could force Internet providers to block any website on suspicion of violating copyright or trademark legislation, or even failing to sufficiently police their users’ activities. And, because so much of the Internet’s hosts and hardware are located in the US, their blacklist would clamp down on the free web for all of us.
The vote could happen any day now, but we can help stop this — champions in Congress want to preserve free speech and tell us that an international outcry would strengthen their hand. Let’s urgently raise our voices from every corner of the world and build an unprecedented global petition calling on US decision makers to reject the bill and stop Internet censorship. Click below to sign and then forward as widely as possible — our message will be delivered directly to key members of the US Congress ahead of the crucial vote:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/?tta
For years, the US government has condemned countries like China and Iran for their clampdown on Internet use. But now, the impact of America’s new censorship laws could be far worse - effectively blocking sites to every Internet user across the globe.
Last year, a similar Internet censorship bill was killed before reaching the US Senate floor, but it has now been refashioned and is back on the table. The new draft grants the government and big corporations enormous powers to force ISPs and search engines to prevent access to sites blacklisted because of allegations of online infringement. But the bill goes even further, also targeting service providers for not doing enough to track and enforce infringement rules, or for providing tools to help US Internet users access sites on the blacklist. Any website can be blocked by the order of a federal judge, without even being found guilty of any crime.
US free speech advocates have already raised the alarm, and some key senators are trying to gather enough support to stop this dangerous bill. We have no time to lose. Let’s stand with them to ensure American lawmakers preserve the right to a free and open Internet as an essential way for people around the world to exchange ideas, share communication and work collectively to build the world we want. Sign below to stop the US Internet Blacklist:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/?tta
In the past months, from the Arab Spring to the global Occupy Movement, we’ve seen first hand how the Internet can galvanize, unify and change the world. Now we can stop this new attack on Internet freedom if we stand together. We’ve done it before. In Brazil and Italy, Avaaz members have won major victories in the right for a free Internet. Let’s galvanize our global web community and crush the most powerful censorship threat that the Internet has ever seen.
With hope,
Luis, Dalia, Diego, Emma, Ricken, Aaron, Antonia, Benjamin and the rest of the Avaaz team
More information:
Op-Ed: Blacklist Bill allows Feds to remove websites from Internet (Digital Journal)
http://digitaljournal.com/article/313463
Disastrous IP Legislation Is Back – And It’s Worse than Ever (EFF)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/disastrous-ip-legislation-back-–-and-it’s-worse-ever
Silicon Valley legislators oppose online piracy act (SFGate)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/15/BUO81LV0KI.DTL
House Hearing on Stop Online Piracy Act Scheduled (PC World)
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/243659/house_hearing_on_stop_online_piracy_act_scheduled.html
Avaaz.org is a 10-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decision-making. (“Avaaz” means “voice” or “song” in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 13 countries on 4 continents and operates in 14 languages. Learn about some of Avaaz’s biggest campaigns here, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
December 17, 2011
An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress
Those who built the internet warn our Congress about the inherent technical (and social) dangers of the SOPA and PIPA bills now moving through the House and Senate.
December 17, 2011
"The fact that there was any debate over whether to call in experts on such a matter should tell you something about the integrity of Congress. It’d be one thing if legitimate technical questions directed at the bill’s supporters weren’t met with either silence or veiled accusations that the other side was sympathetic to piracy. Yet here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can’t explain, and having the temerity to suggest there’s no need to “bring in the nerds” to suss out what’s actually on it… The chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.
This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad."
This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad."
—
Joshua Kopstein, Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works (via onekarma)
Legislation empowering regulators to scramble the internet’s DNS table is an idea bad enough to earn the label “Orwellian”. Should cops have the power to scramble the Dewy Decimal numbers and card catalog of any library that law-enforcement dislikes? A free press is useless if no one can find anything that the “free” press produces.
(via nutopiancitizen)
November 18, 2011
Last week there was a small meeting at Mozilla to discuss SOPA, the Internet Censorship Bill.
It was eerie. The DC groups were practically screaming, “this bill is the worst we’ve ever seen and we can’t stop it” — while everyone else had barely heard of it. The consensus? We needed to wake people up.
Well, yesterday the Internet woke up. *You* woke the internet up.
Check out these numbers and screenshots.
To everyone who wrote their rep, made calls, posted to Twitter and Facebooks — and especially to everyone who ran the modal and blacked out their logos, you are courageous and you made history yesterday. You just took the first step to combine the web’s largest sites, its strongest communities, its staunchest defenders and billions of users into and unbeatable force for stopping censorship.
The scary part? We still might lose. Though growing fast, our coalition still isn’t strong enough.
The bill is backed by an unholy alliance of Hollywood, its unions, drug companies, and the Chamber of Commerce. They are pouring money into it, and they’ve been working on this for years. Yesterday, big players like Tumblr, Mozilla, Reddit, BoingBoing, and even 4chan came out strong on our side. Now it’s your turn. We’ve got to dig in and go viral.
If you ran “Stop Censorship” or the “Contact Congress” splash on your page yesterday, we humbly ask you to keep it running until this bill is dead, and to find more people who can. We understand if you can’t, but the bill is just as bad as it was yesterday — so we’ve got to ask.
Click here to get the code to add to your page. It’s easy.
Yesterday was amazing. There will be more, we promise.
Homes Wilson
Fight for the Future
So, I have one of these on my Tumblr blog which will cover whatever first post in it’s spot. I have a bad feeling it’ll go through if Hollywood and big companies are putting money into it.. and all people care about nowadays is money..
(via grypsis)
November 16, 2011
#Obama doesn’t wanna lose his blog
GOOD ON YOU MR. OBAMA!
#Obama doesn’t wanna lose his blog. indeed!LOL
(Source: davidtennantspants)
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