Wednesday, January 18th 2012
SOPA/PIPA Internet Protests Go Viral, Hit Home
The protests to the widely condemned SOPA & PIPA "antipiracy" censorship bills have been a resounding success. They have gone viral with many, many websites blacking out and putting up protest pages, with big players taking part such as Wikipedia, Google, EFF, Reddit, Craigslist, Techdirt (greyed out) and many more taking part. Unsurprisingly, the bills' backers have not shown any sign of backing down (yet) but were prompted to make statements "wondering what all the fuss is about" to play down the damage done to their play for power, since they have recently made changes to them, such as removing the DNS blocking provisions - for now. Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) senior vice president of communications Jonathan Lamy called the protests 'stunts': "It's a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users and arm them with misinformation. It's time for the stunts to end and those who claim to care about rogue website theft to back up their rhetoric and work with us on meaningful solutions." This is the same RIAA that sued their own customers with extortionate "settlement" letters remember.The US Chamber of Commerce has also been a vocal supporter of these bills. Their chief counsel on intellectual property, Steve Tapp thought that the shutdown was strange: "The PROTECT IP Act and SOPA have been modified by their sponsors to address concerns by removing entirely the provision that would have required blocking of criminal sites. Strangely, those who demanded that change are now shutting themselves down, although it is not clear why they are still protesting after they got what they wanted."
So, these people and others like them are clueless over what kind of total control this gives corporate copyright holders over the internet and the kind of damage that it will cause? Sure. Not a massive power grab or anything, then.
If these bills are allowed to pass, then sites across the internet universe are all at risk of being summarily shut down without any warning over mere allegations of copyright infringement. For example, a site like TechPowerUp could be shut down in an instant over mere allegations that a forum member had made a copyright violating post. These are the actions of a totalitarian state, not a democracy and must be stopped dead.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is of course also doing its bit to fight these bills and have posted about it here. Along with information (pdf) about the perils of the bills, they have also linked to a couple of protest sites for people to sign, one run by themselves. For Americans: blacklist.eff.org and one for non-Americans: americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition/index.html
Finally, www.techdirt.com as usual, has extensive coverage of this issue, often from angles one may not have thought of. Well worth bookmarking. PCWorld are also covering this extensively and have an index page of articles here.
So, these people and others like them are clueless over what kind of total control this gives corporate copyright holders over the internet and the kind of damage that it will cause? Sure. Not a massive power grab or anything, then.
If these bills are allowed to pass, then sites across the internet universe are all at risk of being summarily shut down without any warning over mere allegations of copyright infringement. For example, a site like TechPowerUp could be shut down in an instant over mere allegations that a forum member had made a copyright violating post. These are the actions of a totalitarian state, not a democracy and must be stopped dead.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is of course also doing its bit to fight these bills and have posted about it here. Along with information (pdf) about the perils of the bills, they have also linked to a couple of protest sites for people to sign, one run by themselves. For Americans: blacklist.eff.org and one for non-Americans: americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition/index.html
Finally, www.techdirt.com as usual, has extensive coverage of this issue, often from angles one may not have thought of. Well worth bookmarking. PCWorld are also covering this extensively and have an index page of articles here.