Avast WEBforum
Other => General Topics => Topic started by: YoKenny on January 17, 2012, 09:51:48 PM
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English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout
To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012
Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.
This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout
Wikipedia, Other Sites to Protest Anti-Piracy Bills with Blackouts
http://www.pcworld.com/article/248274/wikipedia_other_sites_to_protest_antipiracy_bills_with_blackouts.html
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As interesting as this is to me (I've only written my House Rep. ~a dozen times about SOPA).....I do not see how it can be spun for very long as a technical discussion before it becomes a political one.
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Good for Wikipedia i guess?
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Good for Wikipedia i guess?
+1....nice, but futile. The very people who are Pro-SOPA probably never use Wiki...in essence, they are depriving the very people who would go against it.
What I worry about also is I feel there will be an inevitable counter-campaign by hackers, and this will only further the gap in knowledge that makes this an issue to begin with, and further support For the bill, not Against it.
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Remember that there are always 2 sides to every coin.
Usually 3 for every story.
What one side considers good for security the other side views
as an infringement of free speech.
It all depends on how it's interpreted and how, if passed, it's enforced.
In my humble opinion, copyright laws are already stringent enough. :)
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Google's amusing contribution
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Google's amusing contribution
If you click on that it gives you a petition to sign.
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Google's amusing contribution
If you click on that it gives you a petition to sign.
Yep, signed it myself. Another drop in the pond, for what its worth. I've been firmly against SOPA since it had a name, been tracking its progress for a while now.
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Google's amusing contribution
Lost it... Can't see.
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Once any Government starts sticking their nose in on the internet you can guarantee they will use laws that advantage them.
This is the one place they cannot suppress our views.They,or big business that Government represents already own all other avenues on the media.It comes as no surprise that China filters their citizens.
Keep Big Government out of it from any country.We all suffer when they start.It will start with piracy but work its way around to privacy.
The internet helped the Arab spring.We Police the internet ourselves with thins like WOT,anti spam,anti malware etc.Leave us to it.I don,t want a Government using laws to there own ends as they usually do.
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Hollywood is actually the biggest advocate for this push.
Hello again RIAA please find another way. >:(
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Google is against this act:
Don't censor the web
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/dont-censor-web.html
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Hi YoKenny,
If you censor information, it is forced to go underground and out of sight. In case of good content mixed within, the good content is also being blocked. It is not about the apple, but the ones that ate of it. It now seems the easiest is to take the box of apples away,
polonus
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"Simply put, S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights. Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs, according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms."
I'm all for fighting the crime of scum-sucking lowlife's making a living off other's work, but how it's done can be concerning. Time will tell.
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according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy
A little dated I'd say.
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The worst part is that if this goes through and the copyright holders are given the power they want they would be able to shut down any site whether justified (in their eyes) or not. It would also require a lot of monitoring by every ISP and wind up driving the cost of internet access up for everyone. I haven't really looked it up but I would imagine that the ISP companies are not thrilled with the prospects either.
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"Simply put, S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights. Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs, according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms."
I'm all for fighting the crime of scum-sucking lowlife's making a living off other's work, but how it's done can be concerning. Time will tell.
The industry loses jobs because of greedy bosses who refuse to take a pay cut.....greedy unions who do the same....Hollywood was for a long time, THE entertainment establishment.
Then things get globalized a little, and they realize they have more competition now. They also act like the now-flaky economy has nothing to do with this....fact was, people where buying an overpriced product because there was no alternatives, and they had the spare money. Now they will try to blame everything on online piracy, which of course plays its part, but is not the magic pill to fix what ails them.
I bet other industries who have similarly lost capital during our economic downturn wishes they had the luxury of blaming piracy.
BTW: If this passes....Avast! will have sold at least one of its VPNs
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If this passes, the forum is in danger of being shut down at someones whim.
There are many times that some Spammer posts links to pirated stuff.
Who's to say if the time it takes for someone to remove it is quick enough or,
if this site is in violation. >:(
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If this passes, the forum is in danger of being shut down at someones whim.
There are many times that some Spammer posts links to pirated stuff.
Who's to say if the time it takes for someone to remove it is quick enough or,
if this site is in violation. >:(
Yes, the way it's worded a site does not have to be actively hosting pirated material but simply have a link to a site that does. It's very disturbing to say the least.
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Its weird without wikipedia I usually go there to find some stuff.. Today i can't since it is blackedout. days like this makes me wish i could read other languages and understand what they say.. ;D
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It would appear that Wikipedia's action has been joined by others, including some outside the US. According to this morning's Yahoo News, Canada's Tucows is "on strike" and offline for several hours in support of the protest, as are a great many smaller sites.
One of the most interesting supporters of this (the protest, that is, not SOPA) was one who benefits from copyrights, author John Scalzi. He's shut down his blog for 12 hours today, commenting that while he fully expects to be compensated for his work, SOPA is definitely the wrong way to accomplish that. As he put it, you don't catch a burglar by carpet-bombing an entire neighborhood.
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If this passes, the forum is in danger of being shut down at someones whim.
There are many times that some Spammer posts links to pirated stuff.
Who's to say if the time it takes for someone to remove it is quick enough or,
if this site is in violation. >:(
Yep, it has the potential to increase costs for anyone involved in online commerce, especially if they want to serve a full global customer base. Perhaps this is part of the reason for the Avast! Cnet forum, smelling this on the horizon.
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There are many other sites that have shut down today. Tucows is just one of them. Craigslist and even Greenpeace have joined in.
http://www.zdnet.com/photos/black-wednesday-the-day-the-web-went-dark/6339722?tag=nl.e539
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I agree with the poster who pointed out that this thread could come dangerously close to turning political. However ...
Apparently one of the biggest objections to both SOPA and PIPA, other than the principle of censorship, is that it would apparently empower the government to take action based on no more than possibly unfounded complaints, without any provision for a hearing or other due process. I can't help but wonder what effect it would have on the totally justified public (and in a number of cases, governmental) opposition if the legislation was revised to require all affected parties be permitted to present their cases.
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There are many other sites that have shut down today. Tucows is just one of them. Craigslist and even Greenpeace have joined in.
http://www.zdnet.com/photos/black-wednesday-the-day-the-web-went-dark/6339722?tag=nl.e539
The blog i created a while go that i hardly update anymore has joined it! http://geekouttech.wordpress.com/ (http://geekouttech.wordpress.com/)
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There are many other sites that have shut down today. Tucows is just one of them. Craigslist and even Greenpeace have joined in.
http://www.zdnet.com/photos/black-wednesday-the-day-the-web-went-dark/6339722?tag=nl.e539
The blog i created a while go that i hardly update anymore has joined it! http://geekouttech.wordpress.com/ (http://geekouttech.wordpress.com/)
Yep, WordPress is one of the things that are shut down.
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Its weird without wikipedia I usually go there to find some stuff.. Today i can't since it is blackedout. days like this makes me wish i could read other languages and understand what they say.. ;D
The following works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?banner=none (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?banner=none)
Signing the petition is much better. :)
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Hi bob3160,
Is that what you and Dch48 say true, that spammers could be responsible for complete domains to be taken down if this is going to be the law of the land? What is worse here the cure or the illness? And what is going to be the alternative? A heavy regulated pay per click Internet2 in the not so far away future?
polonus
P.S. All OK sites should go offline if spammers are spotted to come back up later when cleansed.
Anti-spamming and content violation scanning software will be very much in demand.
D
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Hi bob3160,
Is that what you and Dch48 say true, that spammers could be responsible for complete domains to be taken down if this is going to be the law of the land? What is worse here the cure or the illness? And what is going to be the alternative? A heavy regulated pay per click Internet2 in the not so far away future?
polonus
P.S. All OK sites should go offline if spammers are spotted to come back up later when cleansed.
Anti-spamming and content violation scanning software will be very much in demand.
D
It would be possible for that to happen with the way the bill is worded right now. Whether it would actually happen or not I wouldn't care to find out. :-[
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Hi Dch48,
Know we are with you here on this side of the Atlantic. Remember how it was with cinema in Europe, they could cash in every couple of days for another European country that brought out the same content. They just had to do the rounds, golden days....
polonus
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It's not over yet.
http://sopastrike.com/
http://sopastrike.com/numbers/
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Wikipedia is still going!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CongressLookup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more
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For what it's worth...It is the general consensus that both bills are DOA.
It is highly likely both SOPA and PIPA will not survive either chamber of our disconnected and pathetic Congress. :)
After all we have the worst congress money can buy. ;D
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For what it's worth...It is the general consensus that both bills are DOA.
It is highly likely both SOPA and PIPA will not survive either chamber of our disconnected and pathetic Congress. :)
After all we have the worst congress money can buy. ;D
Oh no, not dead at all. Shelved. Thats different altogether. Shelved just means they probably wont push it through without changing it. ;)
Problem is, I doubt they can re-write it enough to fix what ails it. Its core idea (govt. control of what you can see/hear) is the problem.
Normally I am against user tracking....but if I had to choose between the lesser of 2 evils, I would let myself be tracked all over the Web, as an alternative to this censorship approach. I don't care if my govt. wants to know what I look at or download.....its when they want to decide for me that I get indignant.
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The bills have been "delayed indefinitely". That means they may get dumped or at least substantially rewritten.
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The bills have been "delayed indefinitely". That means they may get dumped or at least substantially rewritten.
Sure, on the surface.
But shelving a controversial bill can also mean they are just waiting till the "storm blows over", so to speak. Seeing if the anti-movement has any staying power. And "substantially rewritten" often means "clever re-wording". ;)
Another thing to watch out for is if they try to piggy-back parts of this a little at a time with other bills.
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Wikipedia have a history of going nearly bankrupt.
For them shutting their site down might have been a cost saving measure as well lol