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!
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?
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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!“
On the eve of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the Stop Internet Piracy Act—where five witnesses will appear in favor of the bill to just one against—a broad group of tech companies, lawmakers, experts, professors, and rights groups have come out against the bill.
This is wonderful news! Let’s just hope things haven’t gone so far that our government won’t listen to their own people…that can’t happen, right?…
First, I would like to thank those who got our grid power back on here in Virginia after Hurricane Irene knocked it out about 24 hrs before Irene made landfall in the Outerbanks of NC.
One thing that being out of power for more than a couple days does do is make you realize how dependent we all have become on ‘the grid’ and how we really need to change that at some point, don’t you think? Between dangers of outages like this, and potential threats from terrorists on our infrastructure, it just seems to make sense that we figure out a way to get the power we need but by decentralizing from The Grid.
Over the last month, since August 4th, we have intermittently had to deal with the smoke and ill air quality of the wildfire in the dismal swamp. There were times when here in our little town there was smoke hanging in the air, and in our very homes when we woke up in the morning and were having trouble breathing. It was particularly bad for my Jim who is on an oxygen concentrator. Thankfully, Hurricane Irene, actually did one thing that was good, it almost (but not quite) put out that wildfire. I hope they can get the 30 or so hot spots put out before it dries out again.
Because I have a problem with the whole issue of dangerous coal ash, and huge coal plants close to people’s homes and spewing dangerous arsenic, and so much more into our air, does not mean I don’t appreciate The Grid or those who work to provide and maintain, and restore that power after natural disasters like this. My only complaint is the dangerous ways in which they often do that; meaning coal – from the cradle to the grave and the health and environmental dangers it poses.
Coal from Mountain Top Removal to this ILL WIND of coal ash that sends ‘sandstorms’ of coal ash directly over the reservation when the winds blow wrong, and other coal plant travesties around the country and around the world, to ODEC trying to get a 1500 MW coal fired power plant in Dendron, VA and Surry County rolling over to get the money they are promised and the empty purse of promised jobs (yeah, how many and for how long, and what of those who live here?) To the whole of a region like Hampton Roads that will be adversely affected by a 1500 MW coal plant with a prevailing wind that will draw that smoke/vapor over other areas in Hampton Roads.
The Moapa River Indian Reservation, tribal home of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, sits about 30 miles north of Las Vegas and about 300 yards from the coal ash ponds and landfills of the Reid Gardner Power Station. Coal ash is the toxic ash and sludge left at the end of the coal burning process. It’s laced with arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals. It’s the second largest waste stream in America and it’s currently unregulated.
If the conditions are just wrong, coal ash picks up from Reid Gardner and moves across the desert like a toxic sandstorm sending the local residents running for their homes. The reservation has lung, heart and thyroid disease rates that are abnormally high and the power plant is currently seeking to expand its coal ash storage capability.
The film An Ill Wind tells the Paiute Indians’ story.
View and interactive presentation of the story at:
Many thanks to the Moapa Band of Paiutes for allowing us to tell this story and to Vinny Spotleson of the Sierra Club and Dan Galpern of the Western Environmental Law Center for helping with the project.
I guess we as individuals and families really do need to start thinking about how we can get ourselves off the grid … if more homes are off the grid, these big coal plants wouldn’t even be considered necessary…
A valiant speech by Ron Paul: Lying is not Patriotic
It was refreshing to hear Ron Paul in Congress speaking out on the Wikileaks/Julian Assange situation on Youtube!
Who will be next? One really has to ask this question.
This heinous Espionage Act has had only dire and detrimental consequences to the freedom of the people of our country in the past. Many suffered unjustly as noted in Naomi Wolf’s article here at Huffington Post.
Those who allow themselves to forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Are we doomed to a “1984″ fate 26 years later than predicted? It looked like we were heading there, but if this is allowed, I fear for all of us in this once great country.
Freedom is something that takes diligence to maintain.
And don’t forget, some of the most horrible things in history were done with the best intentions.
There was a saying from an old movie, Network that bears repeating:
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!
This is how many of us feel about the abuse by the TSA and ‘our’ government regarding full body scans and invasive pat downs that we apparently pay to have the privilege of going through since you can’t fly without the possibility of abusive TSA behavior.
And you have folks like Rush saying it’s intentional. No kidding it’s intentional … they want to humiliate and thereby manipulate people publicly so they won’t buck the system.
Well….
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!
Actually, I haven’t flown since the 1990s and refuse to do so because of the way they are treating paying customers at the airports in this country (USA).
This is more like Gestapo behavior than American Civil Servants (paid by our tax dollars) respectfully trying to protect its Citizens.
A bladder cancer survivor from Michigan who wears a urostomy bag that collects his urine says a rough pat-down by a security agent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport caused the bag to spill its contents on his shirt and pants.
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The Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network says bladder cancer survivors “deserve to be treated with dignity and respect by TSA agents.”
ALL United States Citizens deserve to be treated with dignity and respect by TSA agents!
No United States Citizen should be made to feel embarrassed, humiliated or manipulated by their taxpayer funded Civil Servants.
I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.
This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill “enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits… That is true of TSA crimes too.” The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.
They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.
Late last week, the Transportation Security Administration, bowing to controversy and the threat of lawsuits, ruled that airline pilots will no longer be subject to the backscatter body scanners and invasive pat-downs at TSA airport checkpoints.
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(Incidentally, the requirement that crews undergo checkpoint screening was imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration after the crash of a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight in 1987. A recently terminated flight attendant, David Burke, used his credentials, which the airline had failed to recover, to carry a concealed handgun onto Flight 1771 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. En route, he shot both pilots and nosed the airplane into the ground near Harmony, Calif., killing all 44 on board.)
The Transportation Security Administration has said it will let pilots skip the body scans and aggressive pat-downs that travelers get. Now, Delta CEO Richard Anderson has asked the TSA to let flight attendants get the same treatment. His request was included in a letter to employees over the weekend.
But what makes it all so disturbing is the fact that while we’re submitted to extensive yet inefficient procedures, we’re totally unprotected while we we’re all jam-packed waiting to pass security check; did anyone ever see any type of protection there? How many casualties would a single terrorist throwing grenades and spray-shooting be able to cause? Ask the Ben Gurion Airport security authorities what Kozo Okamoto, the converted to Islam Japanese Red Army member, was able to do on his own in 1972.
Furthermore, what kind of preventive and protection measures are in place regarding our luggage? Close to zero.
So while we’re harassed and frustrated by revealing screening machines that can’t “see” many explosive types, and exposed to unnecessary privacy invasion, tens of pounds of plastic explosives can be easily loaded on the plane with very low chances of being discovered.
John Tyner, a San Diego software engineer and newly minted American folk hero, faces an $11,000 civil-disobedience fine for refusing an intimate groping, dubbed by Orwellian bureaucrats as an “enhanced patdown,” that Hillary Clinton would herself refuse. The man who threatened a citizen’s arrest if his “junk” were touched epitomizes an aroused populace, even including flaccid Baby Boomers, who will no longer tolerate TSA inanity passing off as security at the nation’s airports.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton probably didn’t help matters when she said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that she would not submit to a pat-down “if I could avoid it,” adding, “I mean, who would?”
Suddenly, copyright rules no longer do what they are supposed to do. They have gone bad.
This is a film about how copyright has become one of the most important consumer issues of the digital age; why corporate lobbying risks criminalising the actions of hundreds of thousands of people; and what the future holds for the fight for fairer copyright laws.
When Copyright Goes Bad is an introduction to the renegotiation of copyright and is for anyone interested in how copyright is affecting consumers. It features some of the key players in the copyright debate, including:
Fred Von Lohmann – Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist – University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock – Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee – Co-founder of Public Enemy.
Rather than send this via email, since I hate receiving unsolicited emails, I figured I would just put it on my blog.
Our ability to have a free and open Internet is under attack.
The Federal Communications Commission has been attempting to enforce net neutrality safeguards that would keep big telecoms from inspecting and filtering the Internet content you access, blocking websites and applications they don’t like, and overcharging you for using the Internet. But a recent court decision prevents the FCC from regulating net neutrality in the way it tried.
The FCC now faces an important decision. Will it stand up for consumers and reclassify broadband Internet providers to ensure the Internet stays free?
The FCC has asked for public comment on their net neutrality plans. Join me in submitting a comment in support of the FCC doing everything it can to protect a free and open Internet. Just click the link below to submit your comment.
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!
The article and photos by Tom Pelton on the the Chesapeake Bay Foundation blog.
I recently drove down to the blackwater swamps of southern Virginia to witness a tale of two cities. Many residents of tiny, rural Dendron (population, 300) see their community’s economic salvation in the construction of a coal-fired power plant. But others are deeply worried about the health impacts of toxic mercury pollution and microscopic soot particles. Down the road from Dendron, the town of Clover, Virginia, tried a similar path to renaissance 17 years ago — and learned a sobering lesson.
There are several interviews from both Dendron/Surry County residents and Clover/Halifax County residents, as well as the following:
Harvard School of Public Health Associate Professor Dr. Jonathan Levy, an expert on power plant pollution, said that particulates from the Dendron plant’s smokestacks would likely increase the number of asthma and heart attacks in people living across a wide region. “We’ve done a series of studies over the years looking at power plants in specific geographic areas and across the country. And in general we’ve found that the public health burdens are quite large – on the order of tens of thousands of premature deaths per year. When placed in monetary terms, the damages can be quite large, in relation to the cost of electricity.”
ODEC has been trying to say all is safe for residents of Dendron. However, you have to wonder about that. They can’t place the power plant ‘too close’ to the wetlands, but they can place it closer to the Town of Dendron? Yes, they had to move it closer to the Town and it’s residents because of the dangers to the wetlands, believe it or not!
Oh, and do you see how well the Clover plant in the picture above from the CBF article is hidden from view? ODEC also says that the plant will not be an eyesore or all that visible to the Town that it backs up to?! Yeah right…I buy that.
And as discovered by Tom Pelton, the town of Clover didn’t get the economic benefits either. So are we in the Town of Dendron supposed to believe that that will happen here?
I talked to several residents of Clover. They told me that they, just like the people of Dendron, really hoped the construction of a coal plant would spark a rebirth of their long-shrinking town. But after the Clover Power Station opened in 1995, the community’s only restaurant closed, followed by its grocery store and school.
By 1998, Clover had so few residents and so little money, officials took the rare step of dissolving the town.
It no longer exists.
Is that what ODEC hopes will happen to our little town too?
And what if they build this on the smaller property in Sussex County instead of the Town of Dendron? Will Dendron be in the clear? Not likely. I recently heard that the Surry Board of Supervisors got a big surprise on that score too. Even if they build the power plant in Sussex County, they will still likely be shipping the Coal Ash to a new Fly Ash landfill with all it’s hazardous dangers … to DENDRON! And will they still do the railroad to ship it to Dendron? Or bring it by truck? Either way will be disasterous for the Town of Dendron.
We can’t win for losing!
AND they will still be needing water from the James River and still within the same area that they had originally noted if the plant were in Dendron. So the James River will still have environmentally detrimental affects from the ODEC plant.
Oh, and if they still do either or both of these things; eminent domain will still be a threat to property owners in both Surry and Sussex Counties.
As I say, we can’t win for losing…
And what of the state of attainment for Hampton Roads and Virginia because of this plant?
I think that some may now be thinking that as unwanted as the OLF was/is — that it would have been/would be better than this disaster!
