Is SOPA Really Dead?
Is the world getting better or worse? Today's news about SOPA has done nothing to clear up our confusion.
The White House is taking seriously the public opposition to SOPA. Lawmakers who'd backed SOPA are now making a hasty retreat. Even the bill's architect, Rep. Lamar Smith, is paying attention. He removed the most controversial DNS-blocking rule from the bill.
But then, a little later, we read this on ZDNet:
"U.S. House Judiciary Committee Member Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) opponent, has announced that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has promised him that he will not bring the bill to the floor. That means, for all practical intents and purposes, SOPA is dead.
"In a press release, Issa announced that he was canceling his Wednesday hearing on ‘the impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on the Internet...has been postponed following assurances that anti-piracy legislation will not move to the House floor this Congress without a consensus.'
"Issa said, ‘Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote.' Without the majority leader's support, SOPA won't get to the House's floor, it will not be voted on and this makes it essentially dead."
Dead? Like a horror movie monster, we're sure it will lunge again, no matter how many times it seems to be really, really dead. We read in today's feature article from Mac Slavo that Obama had issued an official veto threat. We hardly think it mattered (and neither does Mac, as you'll see below). Obama mouthed the same threat about vetoing the National Defense Authorization Act. Then he signed it like a good little stooge.
In today's feature article, Mac explains what remains at stake...and why SOPA is just as great a threat to liberty as NDAA.
SOPA DOA
Amid significant pressure from tens of thousands of Internet users and major Web behemoths like Google, Facebook and Reddit, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is, in its current form, dead on arrival:
"Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there's a lot less to worry about.
"The first sign that the bills' prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.
"The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. Though the administration's chief technology officials acknowledged the problem of online privacy, the White House statement presented a fairly detailed critique of the measures and concluded, ‘We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.' It added that any proposed legislation ‘must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.'
"Though the administration did issue a formal veto threat, the White House's opposition signaled the end of these bills, at least in their current form.
"A few hours later, Congress shelved SOPA, putting off action on the bill indefinitely.
"Sourced from Washington Monthly via The Daily Sheeple"
Sponsored primarily by purported free speech advocates that include Democrats and Republicans alike, the SOPA would have fundamentally transformed the Internet as we know it today. As Daisy Luther writes at Inalienably Yours, the bill was nothing short of a direct attack against the First Amendment and the right to free speech:
"On closer inspection, the legalese in the bill has the potential to eviscerate free speech…and like NDAA, without proof…only with suspicion of ‘wrongdoing.' It's all about copyright infringement. If you tick off the powers that be, and you've quoted someone, somewhere, saying something, you may have infringed on their copyright. As a defendant, you are not even present at the legal proceeding, allowing ‘them' to shut you down until you prove yourself innocent.
"How do they shut you down? Search engines are required to remove you from their listings. Internet service providers can be ordered to block access to your site. Advertising networks and payment providers can also be forced to cease doing business with you. This continues until you are proven INNOCENT. Wait -- I thought it was innocent until proven guilty…oh…that was ‘before' the NDAA.
"Source: ‘The Internet: The Last Bastion of Free Speech'"
While this bill of goods was being sold to the American public as a way to reduce online piracy originating on foreign shores, in essence, the legislation would have made it possible for any organization (with the financial assets and access to attorneys to do so) to target websites (foreign or domestic) using excerpts, quotes and videos without express permission of the authors or producers of such content. Furthermore, any website linking to suspected copyrighted content would be guilty by association for facilitating the infringement.
By linking to and excerpting Daisy's article above, for example, this particular website -- and anyone who republishes this article, excerpts it or pulls a link from it -- could be shut down on the service provider level until such time they prove their innocence. (*Note to DHS, et al.: Daisy has given us permission to reprint her article or portions of it, and the excerpt from Washington Monthly has been reprinted under fair use to advance understanding of this political and Constitutional issue.*)
The scariest part of the legislation, as Daisy points out above, is that due process would have been eliminated (just like in the NDAA), forcing Internet providers, search engines and ad networks to simply shut down a website(s) based on just the complainant's accusations, leaving those website owners who were shut down to deal with the fallout with costly legal expenses and lengthy court battles.
You may recall that in 2010, the government shut down 73,000 websites in exactly this manner. Though the owners of the majority of the targeted sites were not technically infringing copyrights, some were linking to other sites that did, making them accessories.
Even more alarming is the ability, under legislation such as SOPA, of the government to control the flow of information across major Internet providers. Articles or videos criticizing political figures or policies could easily be targeted, as they were in October of this year, when the government moved to shut down rogue publishers of critical content .
As I've said before: "Make no mistake, this is a thinly veiled attack not on pirates (because laws for this kind of activity already exist, whether on the Internet or offline), but alternative news media and controversial online communities. When there existed only three ‘news' channels and a handful of influential print newspapers, the message could be easily controlled and repeated to the masses. With the advent of alternative media in the last decade, those who would rule us no longer have the ability to control the message. And this scares them."
What it boils down to is that SOPA was an attempt to put the power of information back in the hands of an elite few who are rapidly losing the ability to control what the masses are reading, hearing and seeing. Alternative news and "extremist" information were the targets (and still are).
While we applaud President Obama (yes, we agree with him on this move) for formally issuing a veto threat, we remain skeptical of his motivations. This being an election year, the last thing the President needs to be dealing with along with the economic crisis and tensions in the Middle East is the protests of millions of voters who would have undoubtedly taken to the streets when access to their favorite web sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook and Twitter was shut down because of alleged SOPA violations.
It is our view that SOPA, in one form or another, will return with a vengeance.
Regards,
Boris
Posted at 11:27AM jan 17, 2012 by Boris in Generalno |
odca launches cloud computing best practice competition
Open Data Center Alliance - ODCA has launched a competition to find the best cloud computing practices and will award a cash prize of $10,000 for the winning entry.[Beri Naprej]
Posted at 03:12PM nov 04, 2011 by Boris in cloud |
MySQL by Examples for Beginners
MySQL is an open-source, relational database management system (RDMS) created by Michael "Monty" Widenius and David Axmark in 1995. It was owned by a Swedish company called MySQL AB, which was bought over by Sun Microsystems in 2008. Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle in 2010. MySQL is successful, not only because it is free (there are many free and open-source databases), but also for its reliability, speed, performance and features.
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/sql/MySQL_Beginner.html
Posted at 09:03PM okt 26, 2011 by Boris in Generalno |
Delete Facebook account - How to permanently delete your facebook account.
Go here http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
Click "Submit" and follow the instructions. You have to enter your password, security code and click submit. Your account will be deactivated for two weeks, and if you DO NOT USE FACEBOOK IN ANY WAY during that period, your account is permanently deleted.
Če ne želite več uporabljali Facebooka in bi radi svoj uporabniški račun izbrisali, lahko to uredite tako, da kliknete na zg. naslov in sledite navodilom . Vedite pa, da računa ne boste mogli ponovno omogočiti in da ne boste več mogli dostopati do podatkov in vsebin, ki ste jih dodali.
Posted at 04:08PM okt 26, 2011 by Boris in spletna skupnost |
Oracle Rolling on with Roller
Blogs.oracle.com, previously on the Movable Type platform, has moved over to the Apache Roller platform (on top of Oracle WebLogic Server 11g and Oracle Database 11g). And blogs.sun.com blogs is now blogs.oracle.com. http://blogs.oracle.com/otn/entry/the_blogs_rolling_on_with. To download Roller ApplicationResources properties file in slovenian language click here. / Blogs.oracle.com, je zamenjal Movable Type platformo za Apache Roller platformo (na Oracle WebLogic Server 11g in Oracle Database 11g platformi). In blogs.sun.com blogs je sedaj blogs.oracle.com. http://blogs.oracle.com/otn/entry/the_blogs_rolling_on_with. Za pridobitev Roller ApplicationResources properties datoteke v slovenskem jeziku kliknite tukaj. (morate biti prijavljeni)
Posted at 11:10PM sep 18, 2011 by Boris in Roller |