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Crazy stuff. Why don't they shut down Ford motors because their cars are used as get away vehicles in bank robberies, or driven by pedophiles? Or shut down Hilton and Sheriton hotel chains because prostitution takes place there and crimes are planned in their bars and restausrants?
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Certainly not my proudest day. Remember though NZ has always been a test ground for a whole lot of stuff. This new internet clampdown and the policing of it is scary stuff and we are the Guinea Pig. It is very worrying. John Key is an asshole, but I doubt very much that any NZ PM would have the nads to stand up for anything. Whats concerning here is the amount of material American corporations have taken off of NZers creative property over the years. If your a kiwi the chances of you getting a patent without having US backing is sweet fanny Adams. Further that a lot of Maori names and designs have been ripped off by everything from toy companies to Hollywood. Its okay for the US to rip off and flay anything when they want but nooooooooooooo if your someone else it's see yah later. I mean Ed, if I had an idea all documented and you pinched it by right of you being a US citizen I would likely get done like a dogs dinner. Further that if you had an idea Ed and some dude with big Moolah saw it-well good night Vienna old son.
"In the Kennedy assassination we must be careful of running off into the ether of our own imaginations." Carl Ogelsby circa 1992
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C'mon Seamus! I lay the blame firmly at John Key's feet being the spineless jellyfish he is. As a good colonial lackey he knows his place. And that is grovelling outside the doors of the US embassy in Wellington. (Don't worry the door mat at the US embassy in Canberra is worn out from all our polititians grovelling here too trying to deliver the head of Julian Assange to Washington) Under David Lange and the old Labor Party New Zealand was the little mouse that roared and told the US stick their nuclear arsenal up their bottom.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Really, some one needs to tell the US to have a cold shower, take a bex and have a good lie down. Completely over the top. The internet has been around 20 years and they're only now getting their act together? We lend books to each other. We used to make copies of all our records on cassette. The sky did not fall.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Magda Hassan Wrote:C'mon Seamus! I lay the blame firmly at John Key's feet being the spineless jellyfish he is. As a good colonial lackey he knows his place. And that is grovelling outside the doors of the US embassy in Wellington. (Don't worry the door mat at the US embassy in Canberra is worn out from all our polititians grovelling here too trying to deliver the head of Julian Assange to Washington) Under David Lange and the old Labor Party New Zealand was the little mouse that roared and told the US stick their nuclear arsenal up their bottom.
The mouse that roared then proceeded under threat of a coup de tat to accept US spy bases on their soil. Oh yeah, we're hard we are. Nope Labour are pretty freaking spineless in a few ways. I doubt they'd have done anything. Oh and yeah I agree we all shared tapes and burned discs. All this is going to do is increase the amount of discs are burnt and portable hard drives are going to be used. It's bloody stupid lol.
"In the Kennedy assassination we must be careful of running off into the ether of our own imaginations." Carl Ogelsby circa 1992
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Yes, I expect that today's NZ Labor party is like our ALP and little different from the right wing parties and would have all the strength of wet spagghetti in standing up for New Zealand against the US. Still it can be done. Should be done.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Peter Lemkin Wrote:All About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet Very Soon
SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is another one of those bills that sounds like it's going to do something mildly positive but, in reality, has serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. It puts power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language vague enough to encompass sites you use every day, like Twitter and Facebook, making SOPA a serious problem. Here's how it works and what you can do about it.
SOPA's coming to a vote very soon. In fact, it was supposed to come to a vote today but was delayed, likely because of all the pushback. Reddit users have already started compiling a list of the IP addresses of popular sites in case SOPA passes and access will be restricted within the United States. A decision is going to be made soon, so if you still don't know what SOPA is or haven't done anything to stop it, read on to learn how you can help beat the bill.
How Does SOPA Work, and Why Should I Care?
The idea behind SOPA sounds reasonable. It came about in order to try to snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited about the many people downloading their product without their permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in support of piracy, against it, or just don't care. SOPA makes it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simple capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement.
This means that if Lifehacker happened to have an article or two that could be interpreted as piracy-friendly, our domain could be blocked so it's unaccessible by visiting lifehacker.com. What the bill can't do is block numeric IP addresses, so you could still access Lifehacker, or any other site that could be censored, if you knew that address. This is important because it means this bill can't do much to stop downloaders of pirated content. If a domain name is blocked, everything will still work via the numeric IP address. Basically, the bill will be no good at stopping piracywhat it was apparently designed to dobut excellent at censoring any web site capable of providing its users with the means of promoting pirated content or allowing the process. This includes sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and many more. If it's possible to post pirated content on the site, or information that could further online piracy, a claim can be brought against it. This can be something as minor as you posting a copyrighted image to your Facebook page, or piracy-friendly information in the comments of a post such as this one. The vague, sweeping language in this bill is what makes it so troubling.
In the event of SOPA-based censorship, any site can submit an appeal so long as they do so within five days. This isn't a lot of time to handle a legal matter, and if you've ever dealt with a copyright infringement takedown notice you know how ineffective an appeal can be. When a threat of legal action is posed, a company is generally going to prefer to err on the side of caution and remove infringing content indefinitely. It's far cheaper to run the risk of removing perfectly legal content than to battle the issue in court. If your web host censors your site because of a SOPA-based claim, you can expect the same sorts of problems.
If you want to learn more about how SOPA works, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted a great overview. You can also view the exact contents of SOPA. For a quick overview, be sure to watch the video at the top of this post.
What Can I Do About SOPA?
Currently Twitter, Google, Reddit, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Zynga, Facebook, and several other sites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA. If you'd like to as well, there are a couple of things you can do.
First, call your congressperson on the phone. This is especially important if you live in Texas, Michigan, Vermont, or Iowa. You can also send a letter to your congressperson by visiting the American Censorship Day web site. To activate the contact widget, you have to click the "Try it out" link that's wedged between two screenshots of a censored logo and the "Website Blocked" widget you're trying to open. This will provide you with a form and allow you to send a letter.
Second, get the word out. Post this article, the American Censorship Day web site, or any other information about SOPA on your social media accounts. Send emails to friends and family. If you oppose the bill, help others to understand why they should oppose it as well.
SOPA is on the fast track, so if you want to fight it you need to do so today. We do, however, recommend you get to know the bill so you you can make an informed decision regarding how you feel about it.
Cheers man very informative!
"In the Kennedy assassination we must be careful of running off into the ether of our own imaginations." Carl Ogelsby circa 1992
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SOPA Opera Update: Opposition Surges by Dan Nguyen
ProPublica, Jan. 19, 2012, 12:39 p.m.
Update: Both SOPA and PIPA have been indefinitely postponed. We will continue to take updates about lawmakers at sopa@propublica.org
As popular Internet sites shut down or blacked out in protest on Wednesday, users flooded our SOPA Opera news application and inboxes to let us know what their members of Congress were saying about SOPA.
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When we first launched SOPA Opera, few members in Congress besides the bills' co-sponsors and its initial opponents had made their opinion known on the proposed laws to regulate the Internet. That changed on Wednesday. Responses from constituents and Congressional staffers kept us busy updating the site past midnight.
The response was overwhelmingly one-sided against the bill. This graphic (also at right) shows the likely vote tallies for SOPA Opera at the beginning of the day Wednesday and the likely tallies as of early Thursday.
![[Image: sopa-opera-count.png]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/images/sopa-opera-count.png)
Before Wednesday, Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Ben Quayle were the only co-sponsors to have withdrawn their support of either SOPA or PIPA (Quayle did so without announcement just the day before). By the end of the Wednesday, at least six other co-sponsors had announced they had withdrawn their support. In total, at least 70 additional members of Congress voiced strong opposition to SOPA or PIPA.
Besides those 70, there were 41 additional politicians who we've categorized as "leaning no." That is, they've spoken strongly against the bills as they are currently written, but leave open the possibility that they may support the bills after they've been amended. (To see a full tally of positions, visit our separate pages dedicated to SOPA and PIPA.)
How many politicians announced they would be co-sponsoring or otherwise outright supporting SOPA/PIPA on Wednesday?
By our count: Zero.
Advocates for PIPA and SOPA have rightfully boasted about the bipartisan makeup of their co-sponsors and supporters. The backlash against the bills was just as bipartisan, and far more boisterous.
Here's the tally as it stood early Thursday (our inbox continues to receive reader updates as we publish this):
[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD] Support[/TD]
[TD]80[/TD]
[TD]65[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD] Oppose[/TD]
[TD]31[/TD]
[TD]101[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD] Leaning No[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]41[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD] Unknown/Undecided[/TD]
[TD]429[/TD]
[TD]332[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Note: We didn't have a "Leaning No" category until Wednesday.
We're relying on our readers to help keep this fast-changing count up-to-date. If you can document any changes of position -- either by tweet, news report, or another published source -- send it to us at sopa@propublica.org
Some Questions, Answered Among the most frequent questions is: "Why is my member of Congress listed as supporting SOPA even after he/she made a statement against it?"
A broad answer: Some SOPA (and PIPA) backers pledge to heavily revise the bill, so the line between an opponent of SOPA and a supporter of an altered version of SOPA is not always clear.
For example, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) recently made a statement against PIPA, saying that he would not vote for it "if it is not significantly improved." So we have classified his stance as "unsupportive," a category that doesn't show up on the front page of the news application.
Along similar lines, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) expressed the same sentiment as Udall (emphasis added): "I would not vote for final passage of PIPA, as currently written, on the Senate floor." However, we have listed him as a "supporter," because he has not withdrawn his co-sponsorship of PIPA.
So far, we've used the "opponent" designation for members of Congress who either back the proposed OPEN Act, which is fundamentally different than SOPA/PIPA -- like Senators Ron Wyden and Maria Cantwell -- or who have stated their opposition to SOPA/PIPA in unqualified terms, like Sen. Scott Brown and Rep. Ron Paul.
As it stands, we can never be certain of each member's true position until a full vote is called. For Sen. Udall and other members of Congress, we've posted a link to their full statements so that readers can take into account the full context of their statements. We have also created a page listing all the statements and actions recorded so far so that readers can see the continuum of support and opposition.
http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/sopa-opera-update
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Yes, shows what social networking via internet CAN do!...However, they [THEY!] will wait a few weeks until all calms down and do an 'end run' - Amrican football term] and hide something similar in another bill...until it sneaks through! Watch! The problem can ONLY be solved by a complete change of Governance and new Paradigms!!!! endless fingers in the dikes will not work!
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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