Wednesday - January 18, 2012

no SOPA for you!

See peeps? This is so much better than living in a tent and pooping on police cars.

SOPA blackout leads co-sponsors to defect

An Internet blackout Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla and thousands of other sites against two anti-piracy bills in Congress has started to have its desired effect: Co-sponsors of the legislation have changed sides and other lawmakers have called for more debate before any vote.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who was a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act — became the latest lawmaker Wednesday to pull his support. In the House, Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), originally a co-sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, pulled his name from the list of sponsors on Tuesday. A spokesman for Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), meanwhile, told the Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday that the congressman is also unable to support SOPA as written.

SOPA is a mess. Perhaps our copyright laws need to be reworked here in the digital age. Perhaps the RIAA - the record companies who are behind this crap (as usual) - need to go take a flying ***k. I don’t know what the answer is, but keep any and all government out of, and away from, the internet seems like a good idea to me. It isn’t theirs; they don’t own it and they don’t have the right to tax it or police it.

OTOH, if we had that vaunted One World Government, this software piracy thing would be a snap to shut down, from the most real level (stolen software) right down to the stupid low level stuff (’fair use’ borrowing of pictures and content). Face it: the ‘net is pretty much an Open Source world: if you don’t want your stuff shared, don’t put it online.

For lots more info about what’s wrong with SOPA, go here, and join an email campaign or two. So far more than a million emails have come in. read more And plenty of web sites big and small have shut down or blacked out for the day. Not me. I’m not in favor of the bills, but I’m not much of a bandwagon jumper-onner. But I do think that whoever the simp was who introduced the legislation ought to be horsewhipped and forced to move to North Korea.

On Twitter, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, confirmed that all of Wikipedia’s 3.8 million English-language articles will be unavailable from midnight Eastern time tonight until midnight Wednesday. Anyone who visits the site will be redirected to a banner that reads “The Internet must remain free.” Also joining Wikipedia in going black are Reddit, Minecraft, Craigslist, and Boing Boing, among others. Craigslist has posted a message at the top of its city homepages with a link to “help put a stop to this madness” of SOPA and PIPA.

The Obama administration, as well as Congress, seem to be listening to the critics. In a blog post, the White House said it would not support “legislation that reduces freedom of expression ... or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said a vote would not come up for SOPA until a consensus is reached.

Please read any statements from any government extremely carefully (on this subject and all others, naturally). We are being fed a bucketful of weasel-words and double-talk. Most of government is sold out to big business money. Don’t let them talk you into accepting a spoonful of censorship “for the good of everyone” instead of what looks like a big bowlful now. That spoon will turn out to be bottomless, and their take-over will be incremental but complete. Fight the man, man. Occupy DC.

To help draw attention to the digital censorship issue, here’s a picture I hacked from some famous starlet’s cellphone. (Warning: full NSFW nudity and really dirty sexuality below the fold!)

Posted by Drew458     on 01/18/2012 at 02:37 PM   
Filed Under: • Big Brother • FREEDOM •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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