The end of Internet as we know it? SOPA/PROTECT-IP.

[EEVblog]

The basic tenet of justice is the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty -- under much of this new and proposed copyright law reform and anti-terror legislation, that right is removed and "the powers that be" need only accuse you of a crime for you to be presumed guilty -- unless *you* can prove otherwise.

And often to prove otherwise, you might have to actually go to court and win a ruling. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And if it's some trivial copyright "technicality" thing, like for example me using a datasheet (which is of course copyright) in a video, and in theory in some alternative dictatorial universe I'm not allowed to actually use it unless I get their express written permission, technically the owner would be able to take me down just for the implication of that breach.
The little guy wouldn't stand a chance.

Dave.

[EEVblog]

No need to look that far. Anyone remember Dave's flux capacitor t-shirt story?

Same thing happened with my FSM T-Shirt 

Dave.

[PeteInTexas]

The little guy wouldn't stand a chance.
Dave.

The sponsor of SOPA is Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from the 21st district of Texas.  I am sorry to say I live in his district.  I have never voted for him.  Unfortunately, A LOT of wealthier people keep sending him back to protect their interest.

[RCMR]

And... have you noticed...

The mainstream media have provided virtually *NO* coverage of this issue.

Why?

Because their bread and butter is copyrighted intellectual property so they'd love SOPA to make it into law.  In fact, many of the USA's major broadcasters and publishers are actually sponsors of the bill.

Sponsors of the bill who also have news/publishing interests include:

News Corporation (also own Fox News)
CBS
Comcast/NBC Universal (owners of NBC and MSNBC)
Time Warner (owns CNN)
Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc. (own ABC News)

Association of American Publishers (AAP)
ESPN
Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA)
Viacom
Macmillan
McGraw-Hill Education
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Random House

So much for the independence of the news media huh?

And, since the vast majority of "the great unwashed" get their news from papers or TV, chances are that they'll never even know what's happening until it's too late and the bill has been signed into law.

Those of us who understand what's going on have an obligation to wake up the public to this travesty -- before the first thing they notice is that an increasing number of their favourite websites have disappeared from the face of the Internet.

[firewalker]

Yeah... Was was that about? They copyrighted a religion symbol?

Alexander.

No need to look that far. Anyone remember Dave's flux capacitor t-shirt story?

Same thing happened with my FSM T-Shirt 

Dave.

[saturation]

This is a problem with any big organization; you are at the mercy of any small group supporting or attacking your interest, and their influence is magnified by the money they have.

That's why the Internet is 'liberating' in that it gives voice to anyone, so long as google, now the dominant search engine, remains open and doesn't censor or favor particular websites and suppress others.

Thus, its important to support the opposition groups, a key one is 

https://www.eff.org/

In general, supports an open Internet or net neutrality, SOPA is just one issue.

Everyone should join the EFF, its the single biggest organization that coordinates with others and actually takes the issues to court, at least in the USA.

SOPA is about intellectual property and giving more teeth to DMCA, which everyone already dislikes.

But open internet is even broader, it prevents your ISP from filtering lawful content, so it prevents them from cutting off say a competitors web hosts, in favor of their own, more than just intellectual property.  There are very few backbone providers, Tier 1 as its called, so if Tier 1 folks decide who sees what, you have censorhip that would make even google weep, they are the true keepers of the keys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_backbone#Modern_backbone


Verizon is particularly scarey.  It not only is a major backbone for the entire Internet in the USA, but also an ISP.  It has the capacity to cut off all other backbones from its network and other ISPs and create its own private Internet in hardware, not just what Facebook attempts to do, which is trivial compared to Verizon's capacity.  Thus, if you go to fcc.gov you'll see a lot of lawsuits by Verizon against the FCC, as the FCC tries to keep Verizon open.

And... have you noticed...

The mainstream media have provided virtually *NO* coverage of this issue.

Why?

Because their bread and butter is copyrighted intellectual property so they'd love SOPA to make it into law. 

[EEVblog]

Sounds like they congress got the message and backed down:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/under-voter-pressure-members-of-congress-backpedal-on-sopa.ars

Dave.

[firewalker]

Great!

Alexander.

[saturation]

Great!  Now we need to keep the Internet open, aka, net neutral.  A reflection of how governments treat freedom is already showing when entire countries censor content.  Each member of eevblog with their respective countries have different rules, so good luck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Censorship_World_Map.svg


Green = no censorship.  Surprisingly, Oz gov't, in yellow, monitors content!

Sounds like they congress got the message and backed down:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/under-voter-pressure-members-of-congress-backpedal-on-sopa.ars

Dave.

[PeteInTexas]

Sounds like they congress got the message and backed down:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/under-voter-pressure-members-of-congress-backpedal-on-sopa.ars

Dave.

And now Obama makes a stand on the side of internet freedom! http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/obama-administration-joins-the-ranks-of-sopa-skeptics.ars

This is great news.  Don't anyone get complacent though.  If you listen closely, politician and supporters dialing backe their support employ language to the effect of "cannot support SOPA as it is currently written".  Translation: we can still be persuaded. 

[EEVblog]

This is great news.  Don't anyone get complacent though.  If you listen closely, politician and supporters dialing backe their support employ language to the effect of "cannot support SOPA as it is currently written".  Translation: we can still be persuaded. 

Or translated even further... "we just put out the fire so we can slip it in the back door later down the track with sneakier wording".

Just like the greatest swindle in history, the US banking bail out, when it got knocked back the first time through.

Dave.

[EEVblog]

Green = no censorship.  Surprisingly, Oz gov't, in yellow, monitors content!

Surely every country monitors content in some way?
Australia is basically censorship free as far as users are concerned. They don't actually block anything, you just aren't allowed to host "Refused Classification" content on Australian servers. So it's only an issue for content producers who host in Australia. But who uses Australian servers anyway?, too expensive.

Regardless of laws and countries, I believe many ISP's take it upon themselves to filter really stuff they find out about, like child porn.
 
Dave.

[firewalker]

Hellas (Greece) doesn't.

You may doing something illegal and no one will hit your door. Until someone starts complaining at least. Then the district attorney will issue an order for further investigation.

It is very difficult for the providers to reveal your real name though. As I can recall from memory only 2 times for pirate content providers gave account infos for the admins of  such sites. They were charging users (advanced membership e.t.c.) for hundreds of thousands euros without paying any taxes. Those cases was more like an economic crime.

Exception is child pornography and suicide threats (in FaceBook e.t.c.) of teenagers. The provider will revel account infos without the order of the district attorney.

Alexander.

Green = no censorship.  Surprisingly, Oz gov't, in yellow, monitors content!

Surely every country monitors content in some way?
Australia is basically censorship free as far as users are concerned. They don't actually block anything, you just aren't allowed to host "Refused Classification" content on Australian servers. So it's only an issue for content producers who host in Australia. But who uses Australian servers anyway?, too expensive.

Regardless of laws and countries, I believe many ISP's take it upon themselves to filter really stuff they find out about, like child porn.
 
Dave.

[EEVblog]

You may doing something illegal and no one will hit your door. Until someone starts complaining at least. Then the district attorney will issue an order for further investigation.

I'm pretty sure that's how it works here too.
Nothing stopping you from uploading this "refused classification" content onto an Oz server and getting away with it indefinitely. It would be next to impossible for the government or anyone else to automatically detect such stuff. So it would have to rely on someone complaining.

Dave.

[rf-loop]

This map green color:

No evidence of censorship

Who can read it as: No censorship.

I have never understand that no evidence about something means that there is not something.
And maybe direct censorship is most low problem what internet include.

Real problem is "somewhere" there....

Also think opposite censorship. "inverted censorship"
There are lot of false flag's and other types of disinformation.

Think some new US law and internet authentication systems and then security - oh, what security.
What ever you do in internet it is just like write all to post card.
Even if you use crypted services (example your netbank) with normal public keys.  There is just one very stupid hole.  Who guarantees the guarantor?
CA system is broken and it leaks. System is just as weak as weakest point.

And who have full access to internet infrastructure in nations borderlines. In all developed or developing country just this nation goverment some peoples. If "they" ask some data and they tell that do not tell even that we have visited. They get data and no one never know it.

Most of internet users think that internet is just random free network. It can not think more wrong. And what ever is some wiki*peep* map color.

[alm]

I have never understand that no evidence about something means that there is not something.

It does not mean, but it's the closest we can get to proving the absence of something. Look up absence of evidence vs. evidence of absence. The only thing you can do is look harder for evidence, until you're fairly sure that your investigation was so thorough that you should have found something if there was anything.

[firewalker]

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/stopped-they-must-be-on-this-all.html

[saturation]

In the end, there will always be enemies of the open Internet, so any reader would be encouraged to join some opposition group rather than leave the opposite camp free to do what they will.  Be if the EFF [ which works only in the USA] or other groups.

I concur with Dave, censorship should occur at the individual user level, you don't want your family to see it, block it.  If you host items your country deems illegal: child porn, warez, etc., and are not caught now, in the US there is almost no statue of limitations for crimes, even if its been taken down or the defendant 'reformed', if its discovered years later punishment will still be required.

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/stopped-they-must-be-on-this-all.html

Green = no censorship.  Surprisingly, Oz gov't, in yellow, monitors content!

Surely every country monitors content in some way?..
Regardless of laws and countries, I believe many ISP's take it upon themselves to filter really stuff they find out about, like child porn.
 
Dave.

[RCMR]

[Or translated even further... "we just put out the fire so we can slip it in the back door later down the track with sneakier wording".

Yes, a commonly used strategy in the political world...

Government: "We are going to kill all your children"
Public: "gasp -- outrage!"
Government: "Okay, we're only going to kill your first-born"
Public: "phew -- thanks, we were worried for a moment"

Typically, governments announce "plans" to introduce horrifically unacceptable laws and then recant, offering instead a much watered-down (but still draconian) alternative.  The great unwashed public, more often than not, accept the watered-down version -- which in reality, was exactly what the politicians intended on legislating anyway.

If they'd simply tried to pass the lesser law first, the public would have been just as outraged but because they make it look like the lesser law is really a huge backdown and concession -- it gets accepted by the vast majority of people.

I've seen this happen over and over again -- even here in NZ -- and a gullible public fall for it *every* time.

[don.r]

SOPA has been shelved but PIPA is still alive...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/16/so-is-sopa-dead-not-exactly/

apparently Wikipedia is going down on Wednesday...

[Teknotronix]

All this SOPA/PIPA stuff seems like a bit of a smoke screen

http://blog.curry.com/stories/2012/01/16/sopaIsARedHerring.html

[DrGeoff]

Even if you use crypted services (example your netbank) with normal public keys.  There is just one very stupid hole.  Who guarantees the guarantor?
CA system is broken and it leaks. System is just as weak as weakest point.

It's pretty widely known that PKI has always been broken. In reality though it is being used often as a series of closed systems, rather than a widespread public infrastructure.

[Teknotronix]

Even if you use crypted services (example your netbank) with normal public keys.  There is just one very stupid hole.  Who guarantees the guarantor?
CA system is broken and it leaks. System is just as weak as weakest point.

It's pretty widely known that PKI has always been broken. In reality though it is being used often as a series of closed systems, rather than a widespread public infrastructure.

The thing with banks is that they are not so concerned with the privacy/confidentiality of your information. They are more concerned with implementing robust authentication mechanisms that ensure the value and integrity of the transactions. Encryption is only one small part of this problem because nobody can ever guarantee the how secure any endpoint is that might be sending/receiving.

[slateraptor]

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

Wiki sure knows how to get the general public's attention.

[saturation]

Yes. So join any group that is in opposition.  You don't have to contribute money, just your support via membership at minimum, counts.