Tag: sopa

Who turned the lights out?

You may have noticed that a number of websites across the Internet today have modified their look a bit. In many cases, the normal content of that site is unreachable. Why would they do such a thing, you may ask? Well, there are two proposed laws, SOPA and PIPA, that threaten what we, today, enjoy as the Internet. The short version of these laws is that, basically, if you’re found to have any material on your website that infringes copyright, you face having your website shut down, without due process, all of your advertising pulled, being stricken from search engines, and possible jail time. Pretty draconian. There are a number of places that can explain, in more detail, what the full text of the legislation says. If you’re interested, check out americancensorship.org or eff.org.

Or, you can check out this video, from ted.com, that explains the legislation and why it’s so bad.

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If you’re coming here after the 18th of January, here are some images of the protesting.

Google

 

Wikipedia

 

Wired.com

Blacklisted!

Back in October of 2011, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives called HR.3261, or the “Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA).” Go take a look, I’ll wait. It’s a relatively straightforward bill, especially compared to others I’ve looked at. Hell, it’s only 15 pages long! And it’s going to kill the Internet.

Ok,ok.. It won’t *KILL* the Internet, but it has the potential to ruin what we consider to be the Internet. Personally, I believe that if this passes, it has the potential to turn the Internet into nothing more than a collection of business websites, at least in the US.

So how does this thing work? Well, it’s actually pretty straightforward. If your website is suspected of infringing on copyrighted material, your website is taken down, any advertising you have on your site is cut, and you are removed from search engines. But so what, you deserve it! You were breaking copyright law!

Not so fast. This applies to *any* content on your website. So if someone comments on a blog entry, or you innocently link to a website that infringes copyright, or other situations out of your control, you’re responsible. Basically, you have to police every single comment, link, etc. that appears on your website.

It’s even worse for service providers since they have to do the blocking. Every infringing site is blocked via DNS. And since the US doesn’t have control of all of DNS, and some infringing sites are not located in the US, this means we move into the realm of having DNS blacklist files. The ISP becomes the responsible party if they fail to block these sites, which in turn means more overhead for the ISP. Think you pay a lot for Internet access now?

So what can you do? Well, for one, you can contact your representative and tell them how insane this whole idea is. And you can protest SOPA itself by putting up a protest overlay on your site. There’s a github project with all of the source code you need to add an overlay to your website. Or, if you have a Serendipity web blog, you can download the Stop SOPA plugin I’ve written.

Get out there and protest!