SOPA protest swells as Google, Scribd and WordPress join

SOPA protest swells as Google, Scribd, and WordPress join – Arstechnica

“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” a Google spokesman told Ars. “So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page.”

List of those big sites that are protesting: sopastrike.com

More information at http://americancensorship.org/

MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It

MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It

Right now Congress is considering two bills—the Protect IP Act, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—that would be laughable if they weren’t in fact real. Honestly, if a friend wrote these into a piece of fiction about government oversight gone amok, I’d have to tell them that they were too one-dimensional, too obviously anticonstitutional.

Make no mistake: These bills aren’t simply unconstitutional, they are anticonstitutional. They would allow for the wholesale elimination of entire websites, domain names, and chunks of the DNS (the underlying structure of the whole Internet), based on nothing more than the “good faith” assertion by a single party that the website is infringing on a copyright of the complainant. The accused doesn’t even have to be aware that the complaint has been made.

I’m not kidding.

Hope everyone has contacted their Congressmen and women and told them exactly what you think of this unconstitutional and anticonstitutional ‘so called’ legislation! I have!

BTW: Don’t forget to urge the President to VETO NDAA!!! “President has until December 26 to act on NDAA” per Americans to Obama: Veto NDAA, White House phones jammed

SOPA flip flop

So we can’t just sit back and relax and enjoy the holidays, eh?

House Delays Taking Action on SOPA Until Dec. 21 – Mashable

Nope. Guess not. SOPA was supposedly pushed off till 2012, but then they flip flopped and now they will be meeting on the 21st. I wonder how they got Congress to come back when they were supposed to be on break? Must have been pretty profitable to them one way or another?

SOPA Markup Runs Out Of Time; Likely Delayed Until 2012 [Update: Or Not...] – TechDirt

From this article: SOPA, bill to stop online piracy, hits minor snag in House – CBS:

Public Knowledge, a Washington based advocacy organization pushing for an open Internet, slammed the panel’s chair for pushing the legislation without understanding the bill’s unintended consequences.

“SOPA, as written, would threaten the functioning, freedom, and economic potential of the Internet,” said Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of Public Knowledge, adding that scheduling a vote “when many members may well be absent demonstrates a clear desire to continue dodging the questions raised by experts, members, and the public.”

Tech Companies have repeatedly stated that this would be bad for everyone:

Looks like Congress has declared war on the internet – Gigaom

Tech firms fight SOPA by talking job creation – CNN Money

WTF is happening with SOPA now? – Boing Boing:

If you followed my tweets from the markup session for SOPA in the House of Representatives, you know how frustrating it was to watch: you had these lawmakers blithely dismissing the security concerns of the likes of Vint Cerf, saying things like, “I’m no technology nerd, but I don’t believe it.” In other words: “I’m a perfect ignoramus, but I find it convenient to disregard the world’s foremost experts.” Another congressman from Florida kept saying things like “No one can explain to me how this bill harms political debate or academic freedom.”

Congressional SOPA hearings: no opponents of the bill allowed:

Irony Alert: The House is holding hearings on sweeping Internet censorship legislation this week — and it’s censoring the opposition! The bill is backed by Hollywood, Big Pharma, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of them are going to get to testify at the hearing.

But the bill’s opponents — tech companies, free speech and human rights activists, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users — won’t have a voice.

And can anyone be blamed for being upset with this mess!?!

The nightmarish SOPA hearings – ComPost – Washington Post:

This is terrifying to watch. It would be amusing — there’s nothing like people who did not grow up with the Internet attempting to ask questions about technology very slowly and stumbling over words like “server” and “service” when you want an easy laugh. Except that this time, the joke’s on us.

…

As long as there have been new technologies, the entertainment industry has been trying to get them shut down as filthy, thieving pirates. Video cassettes? Will anyone tune into TV again? MP3 players? Why even bother making a record? Digital video recorder that lets you skip ads? That’s a form of theft!

…

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that, in the name of preventing online piracy of copyrighted work, creates a horrifyingly large censorship authority for the Internet. Among other things, it requiresservice providers (which have come out opposing the bill) to block access to entire sites if a user on the site is accused of copyright infringement.

There are dozens of reasons this is wrong. The biggest and most pressing is that not only does the bill not do what it sets out to do, it also creates a horrifyingly blunt instrument to censor the Internet.

Top Internet engineers warn against SOPA:

Some of the original engineers of the Internet called Thursday for lawmakers to scrap anti-piracy bills, saying the proposals would pose major technological barriers for the Web and stifle new innovations.

The letter comes as House Judiciary committee members on Thursday debate the Stop Online Piracy Act introduced by Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) that has drawn impassioned support from media firms but opposition by Web firms and some public interest groups.

…

Vint Cerf of Google, domain name system software author Paul Vixie and Internet routing engineer Tony Li were among 83 high-profile engineers who signed an open letter to Congress in opposition to the House Stop Online Privacy Act and Senate Protect Intellectual Property Act.

“If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure,” the engineers wrote.

An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress:

Today, a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers sent an open letter to members of the United States Congress, stating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills that are under consideration in the House and Senate respectively.

The article has the letter itself, as well as a link to the pdf of the letter.

It also has the impressive list of VERY SMART PEOPLE! Engineers! People who would know! SOPA is a very bad thing!

Call your Senators! Please work it in to your busy holiday schedule. I did and I hope you will too. I will do it again come Monday. All this on the weekend when we can’t do anything about it?! Very annoying that they would flip flop like this at beyond the 11th hour!

As an American Citizen..I am appalled at our Congress. And even more so with our President who seems to be backing this crap legislation.

The PIPA (Protect IP Act = Senate Bill S.968) is no better. Both of these crap legislations need to go!

These bills are so bad, in next to no time, we could all be feeling like we are in a tyrannical empire … The NDAA was bad enough and they let that piece of crap legislation through already. Don’t let Congress make yet another major mistake and give away the remaining liberties and freedoms we so love.

In the words of Eye Drops from the old ZDTV/TechTV: “Think about that!“

EDIT: Adding the following from Cory Doctorow on Twitter:
“@doctorow: A good piece explaining what #SOPA can mean to everyday Americans http://t.co/qIqInkYJ” The original posting is here: http://www.bricoleur.org/2011/12/overbroad-censorship-users.html

Happy 220th Bill of Rights Day!

I hope they listened when we sent word to our Senators …

I thought it was over, but I got this email from Campaign for Liberty today:

Today marks the 220th anniversary of the day the Bill of Rights were officially added to the Constitution.

Ironically, the U.S. Senate is set to kill the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments of that Bill of Rights later today.

Last night, the U.S. House approved the Conference Report version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes provisions that would allow the President to throw American citizens in jail and keep them there indefinitely.

The Senate is set to vote on this bill around 4 pm eastern today, so I need your immediate help if we are to stop this dangerous legislation.

You can find your senators’ contact information here.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Please, call them right away and demand they stand up for the Bill of Rights on its 220th anniversary by voting “No” on the NDAA Conference Report.

It’s not over till it’s over. I contacted my Senators. I hope they got inundated today!

I hope all of Congress and the sitting President of our country realize that there are a lot of us who are upset about our Bill of Rights being spit upon last night.

We will not forget what you have done come election time.

Sen. Rockefeller Wants the FCC to Protect the Internet for Consumers

Sen. Rockefeller Wants the FCC to Protect the Internet for Consumers (Youtube video link)

As one of those underserved/unserved rural areas that Sen. Rockefeller talked about in the Youtube video above, I have been talking via email to Congress, the FCC, and anyone else that will listen about reversing the mess that allowed Comcast to win in court. We The People need to be protected and broadband needs to be reclassified as a utility in order to protect We The People.

We just had to up our Verizon Wireless service to meet my business needs a little better (still not as much as we really need but closer) and are now playing $120/mo (plus fees and taxes) to get ONLY 10GB with two USB devices from Verizon Wireless (they did offer 10GB with a single USB device for $199!) — because there are no other options for even pseudo broadband, much less real broadband in our area even for my small business which absolutely needs real broadband.

I have repeatedly over the years, and as recently as a couple weeks ago, talked to; Charter Communications, Cox Business, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, a company that works with Accel (same people who provide secure Internet for the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts, MacDonalds, gas stations, etc.) which is too expensive and way too restrictive for our needs — and is still wireless btw and making use of (in our case the same Verizon tower we are currently using) since AT&T doesn’t even serve our area (closest AT&T tower is a 1x/National Broadband tower (not a 3G tower) in Surry Courthouse (Surry County, VA), 8 miles away.

The only other viable alternative for us would be a T1 — which is so far out of our league price was as to be laughable at $450-$600/mo. (with/without equipment). This is totally unworkable for us as a small business owner in our rural area, much less as a home user.

NOTE: Satellite Internet is way too slow and has way too much lag for the real time needs of my business and satellite internet are almost as limited bandwidth wise at 7GB/mo according to the documents for HughesNet. But I couldn’t look seriously at satellite Internet since I have seen the satellite Internet in action at client’s homes and it just wouldn’t work for a small business with our needs, particularly multiple users with decent throughput, as well as realtime needs like streaming, ftp for large amounts of files at a time, working on content management systems online, irc/chat, virtual desktop sharing, video/audio sharing, etc.

And none of the limited/wireless options make it easy to get security updates, and Windows updates for multiple computers in a business setting, or use online storage backup, or even do some pleasurable things like watch even a single hour long show on Hulu or elsewhere once a week. Or, buy and download larger software packages, or download audio books you want to purchase from iTunes, Audible, etc., or buy full music albums, or buy/rent movies from iTunes or Amazon, stream movies from your Netflix account, or wherever you want, or do any number of other normal things that most people don’t have to think twice about on true wired or unlimited wireless broadband even in a home setting.

Don’t get me wrong, Verizon Wireless, does a very nice job of providing a solid connection, with decent speeds over their Wireless 3G/EVDO network, but their pricing and the pricing of all wireless carriers who limit you to 5GB/mo and 25 cents (or any cents for that matter for overage) is ludicrous and eat anyone alive in monthly bills! That is why we had to get another device. We could very easily make use of a third device (to get 15GB/mo), but that would be $180/mo!

See what I mean!?! This is nuts!!!!