Posts Tagged ‘PIPA’
The double-barrel decisions to punt on the bill capped an extraordinary week of public pressure — and an extraordinary reversal of fortunes for Hollywood, whose lobbyists seemed to think they were on cruise control to passage of bills aimed at protecting their content from online thieves.
Source: Politico
Don’t you just love happy endings? Actually, in my case, I’m more of the Leaving Las Vegas ending type of guy, but still, to imagine the big money Hollywood lobbyists smug with the certainty that they had bought and paid for the votes of enough senators and congresspeople to ensure the passage of Chinese government censorship for America, only to see the tech heavyweights use their platforms on the Internet to rally public opinion to the tune of millions and millions of Americans signing petitions and calling their representatives . . . it’s a beautiful thing.
Power to the people – when organized and sufficiently motivated, even the biggest money of the big lobbiests can be defeated. Now if we could only get the same kind of public outcry to let the Obama administration know that “we can’t wait” on jobs and Keystone XL . . .
* technically, these bills have not been killed but punted, most likely until after the election. SOPA and PIPA are both heavily damaged in public perception though, so most likely it’s back to the drawing board instead of Congress trying to rework them. Let’s just hope they can find a way to address the concerns of the intellectual property rights holders without trampling the freedom of the Internet.
If this doesn’t show why SOPA is so misguided and completely wrongheaded, check out the fact that even it’s own co-sponsors are not in compliance with the proposed law!!!
From Jamie Lee Curtis Taete at vice.com:
The above screencap shows the homepage of Florida congressman/SOPA co-sponsor/probable PIPA supporter Dennis Ross’ website.
Which features the appropriately titled illustration “Overweight Government Pig” by cartoonist John S. Pritchett. You’ll notice that Dennis cropped out the part where it says “© John Pritchett”. We contacted John, and he told us:
“To my knowledge, I did not license the usage of my “Overweight Govt. Pig” illustration to Dennis Ross.”
Wuh oh!
Source: Jamie Lee Curtis Taete at vice.com via Sarah Roman at usamericanfreedom.com
I felt it my duty as a law-abiding citizen to contact the Congressman and let him know of the offense:
Dear Congressman Ross,
This is to inform you that your use of the “overweight government pig” image at your website is in violation of copyright laws, and that your removal of the copyright holder’s name from the image shows premeditation and a willful disdain for said copyright laws on your part.
In keeping with the spirit of the draconian SOPA law which you support, we demand you blacklist your website and remove all traces of it from the Internet.
Thank you for your compliance. Long live Chinese-style totalitarian control of the Internet in America.
Sincerely,
Mike Cornelison
Congressman Ross only takes comments from addresses inside his 12th district of Florida. Feel free to contact him from my Bartow, Florida office:
255 N Broadway Ave
Bartow, FL 33830-3912
Contact Congressman Dennis Ross
Ah, what a beautiful thing to see a great website so many people depend on willing to stand up and suspend their service in protest against evil . . .
Interesting to see Google only went halfway with their protest . . .
I was a little disappointed to see Google’s wouldn’t go so far as to suspend their service, but as I thought about it, it’s understandable, really – Wikipedia has the unique advantage that no other site anywhere provides what they provide as far as being a one-stop for any sort of knowledge imaginable, but if you need to do a search and Google has shut itself down in protest, that’s not going to stop you from searching, you just go somewhere else and who knows if once you go elsewhere you might never come back. So I’m willing to cut Google some slack for not completely shutting itself down today.
UPDATE: Excellent explanation of why Google is against the draconian measures of SOPA and PIPA and a cool graphic on just how many of us are with them.
Oh by the way, you remember Chris Dodd, the guy who did more to cause the housing crisis than any other person in America except for maybe Barney Frank? Well this guy is now chairman of the MPAA, and check his quotation here, an instant inductee to the Hall of Fame of Irony and Idiocy:
[Shutting down their services in protest] 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 . . .
source: MPAA Press Release
This guy! Talking about “abuse of power”? This from a guy who supports Chinese-style totalitarian control of the Internet in America?
So basically, he says it’s irresponsible for a website to shut down IT’S OWN SERVICE if they choose to do so, but he thinks it’s perfectly okay for our Federal Government Overlords to have the power to shut down any website they may see fit? Oh yeah, give the government dictatorial powers and nothing irresponsible could ever happen, you’ll never see major websites targeted for their politics or their owners bullied one way or another under the threat of a possible shutdown and I’m sure you’d never see that kind of power used to stomp little sites out of existence before they get too big for anyone to notice.
He’s upset with Wikipedia because they shut down a service of their own creation???
In Chris Dodd’s world, I bet you not only should the government have the power to shut down any website they see fit to shutting down, but I bet you he’d also give the government power to force a website to stay online at their demand or risk of fines and imprisonment.
Hit the Wikipedia page, type in your zip and call your representatives.
On a day known around the Internet as “Dump GoDaddy Day,” I received the following email from my own webhost, 1&1, an email that was both spot-on politically as well as being a well-timed effort to capitalize on the exodus of tens of thousands of domains from GoDaddy.
Dear Sir/Miss,
You may have heard about Protect-IP (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently under consideration in Congress. If passed, among other things, SOPA requires Web hosting companies like 1&1 to police websites in order to prevent them from communicating copyrighted information on the internet. We would like to make sure you are aware of 1&1’s official position on SOPA.
As a global provider of domains and hosting services, we oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or Protect-IP (PIPA) Acts currently under consideration. While we observe the concerns of those who are troubled by the potential impact on protecting intellectual property online, 1&1 feels there is an urgent need to strike a balance between dissemination of and access to information and protection against its illegal use within the public domain.
The US government is currently reviewing SOPA and PIPA as possible ways to prevent unlawful distribution of copyrighted materials available on the internet. These current proposals, if passed, would allow for significant interventions into the technological and conomical basis of the internet. This could put the vast benefits and economic opportunities of entirely legal and legitimate e-business models at risk. Generally, companies offering technological services should not be forced to be the executor of authority in such matters. If they were to act upon every implication of content infringement without any judicial research into the actual usage of its customers, the integrity behind their customer’s freedom of information and speech would be enormously harmed.
1&1 Internet, Inc. has worked through associations and with related companies to ensure that these aspects are taken into account. Thus, we welcome the serious consideration by the US Congress of the potential harmful effects on Internet freedom should SOPA and / or PIPA be passed as law, and hope the stability of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) remains intact.
We encourage every Internet user concerned about these plans to contribute to the debate and to raise their voice with their local representatives in the House or Senate. One way to express your concerns could be to use one of the websites that emerged to protect user interests in the current legislative debate, such as http://fightforthefuture.org/.
At 1&1 we support you, our customer, and an open internet. If you find that you are supporting a company that encourages SOPA and wish to drop them as a provider, please follow the simple instructions contained on the website linked below.
Thank you for being one of our extremely valued customers, and for taking the time to read this.
Best regards,
Frederick Iwans
General Manager 1&1 Internet Inc.
No surprise that politicians who have been bought and paid for by the entertainment industry are behind these bills, and some of them may be so completely naive they might imagine fighting piracy is the only thing that these bills will enable, but there is a lot more to worry about beyond the unfair honus the bills would place on web hosts. Look into it deeper, and these bills also give the government the power of judge, jury and executioner to take down any website they find objectionable. If you give the government a kill switch for any website it deems objectionable, just watch the abuses ensue. Absolutely, positively, we do not want to allow our government to get on the slippery slope towards Chinese authoritarian control of the Internet.
If you browse the Internet, you’ll see a beautiful coalition of left-wing bloggers and right-wing bloggers all united against these legislative abominations. Here’s an article from Declan McCullagh where he makes 2012 predictions, and at the top of the list: SOPA opponents may go nuclear. Now there’s one apocalyptic prediction we should all help make a reality.
SOPA supporters are the 1%. Don’t let the 1% kill freedom on the Internet.
Source: ibtimes.com