Consider asking congress to vote "NO" on SOPA & PIPA

[kajukenbo]

You may have noticed that some sites (in the US) like Google & Wikipedia look strange today.
There is a very good reason for that: a major online protest via "blackout."

Consider sending congress a message to vote "NO" on SOPA and PIPA today, if you are in the US:

[ https://blacklist.eff.org/ ]

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ]

[ https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/ ]

[ https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/act ... n_KEY=8173 ]

[ http://americancensorship.org/ ]

Passing this on to your personal email lists would not hurt either.

[serleran]

I'll just use a proxy. Government stopped being of the people, for the people when those words were written.

[MormonYoYoMan]

Asking? No - "demanding" might be a better action. The federal government has, by and large, been deaf for a long time.

[AGNKim]

I'll just use a proxy.

Using a proxy won't help if the government has taken a site down due to alleged pirating. In theory, if someone on these boards posted a copyrighted image, the entire site could be shut down and TLG be held responsible and fined. Proxy or no, you ain't logging into the TLG forums for a while. SOPA and PIPA are very draconian and I really think the government thought they could sneak this by an unsuspecting, and sadly ignorant, populace.

[serleran]

Using a proxy won't help if the government has taken a site down due to alleged pirating. In theory, if someone on these boards posted a copyrighted image, the entire site could be shut down and TLG be held responsible and fined. Proxy or no, you ain't logging into the TLG forums for a while.

I suppose that depends on how the site is "taken down." But, regardless, the concept of this bill is retarded. Though, I do wonder how many large companies will move their sites to off-shore hosts.

[kajukenbo]

As an oversimplification, the law gives them the right to order an ISP to block any website that they deem to be somehow infringing on copyrighted materials - from anywhere, even other countries.
But it also includes provisions to end your ability to use a proxy to hit such sites, or to even LEARN how you might use a proxy to do so:

"SOPA gives the government new powers to go after sites that provide information about tools that might be used to bypass the blacklists"

For those of you not in the US, consider this:
“The internet is a global infrastructure and can’t be run in one single country. Besides fighting SOPA, we must also take away the possibility for a single country to rule over the global infrastructure.”

"As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's underlying infrastructure. The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to block users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the Internet grows increasingly balkanized.

It gets worse: the blacklist bills' provisions would give corporations and other private parties new powers to censor foreign websites with court orders that would cut off payment processors and advertisers. Broad immunity provisions (combined with a threat of litigation) would encourage service providers to overblock innocent users or even block websites voluntarily. This gives content companies every incentive to create unofficial blacklists of websites, which service providers would be under pressure to block without regard to the First Amendment.

Service providers would be forced to monitor and police their users' activities as well, threatening the DMCA safe harbors that have been vital to online innovation over the last decade. SOPA gives the government new powers to go after sites that provide information about tools that might be used to bypass the blacklists — even though these are often the same tools used by democratic activists around the world to bypass Internet censorship mechanisms implemented by authoritarian governments like Iran and China."

[dachda]

Weird. I went to the wikipedia site you have listed and it it NOT blacked out for me. I clicked around about ten times and every link to another wiki page came up in english no problem. But the same link is blacked out on my wife's laptop. What's up with that?

Boardgamegeek.com is also blacked out. Part of the gaming community is with it!

[kajukenbo]

The odds are you have different routes set up via your hosts file (or maybe an intermediary proxy) on the machine that gets to the "proper" site.
Or you can have a filter or pop-up blocker of some sort that is preventing the blackout page from appearing.
The proper Wikipedia pages should load actually. They just intercept the call and put the blackout in front of it.

I'm mostly speculating, because I did not bother to read their web page code.

[bloodymage]

Well, so much for that. I'm getting this all over the place and just took action to get a 404 error. Figures.

[kajukenbo]

Well, so much for that. I'm getting this all over the place and just took action to get a 404 error. Figures.

I do not follow you. What is the issue?

[kajukenbo]

This may be the reason, it is a Good Thing (tm)
[ http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57361 ... s-offline/ ]

Protect IP, SOPA protests knock Senate Web sites offline
'A widespread Internet protest against Hollywood-backed copyright legislation has knocked some U.S. Senate Web sites intermittently offline.

Around 11 a.m. PT today, the rush of visitors looking for ways to contact their members of Congress overwhelmed several Web pages of individual senators. As CNET reported this morning, some sponsors of the Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act have switched sides as a result of the protest.

The amount of traffic "temporarily shut down our Web site," Sen. Ron Wyden, the leading opponent of the Protect IP Act, wrote on Twitter. '

[Arduin]

The odds are you have different routes set up via your hosts file (or maybe an intermediary proxy) on the machine that gets to the "proper" site.
Or you can have a filter or pop-up blocker of some sort that is preventing the blackout page from appearing.
The proper Wikipedia pages should load actually. They just intercept the call and put the blackout in front of it.

I'm mostly speculating, because I did not bother to read their web page code.

It worked for me but, I saw a flicker of black. I'm using Chrome with pop-up blocker on.

[Falinor]

I took the old fashioned route. I snail mailed my congressman and senators. I figure a physical letter is not as easily ignored as an e-mail.

[Arduin]

I took the old fashioned route. I snail mailed my congressman and senators. I figure a physical letter is not as easily ignored as an e-mail.

They weigh a written letter more heavily that an e-mail...

[Sir Ironside]

For those of us that live in Canada, it was asked how it would affect Canada. The article I read about this said that many Canadian sites get their IP information through the U.S. which basically means we practically fall under U.S. law, even though we are a independent nation.

Beyond what the American people think of this legislation, I don't think that the U.S. government has really thought this out. There is already rumblings from some European countries that are considering, for lack of a better word, retaliation if this passes. Just think Americans, you just might be banned from websites through other countries that do not fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. This will be worse that what China does. I certainly hope that Canada breaks free from the U.S. and starts getting IP's from somewhere else.

As far as programs that will help get around SOPA, Firefox already has one and the U.S. government has already stated that Firefox will be directly countermanding their law and will be punished forthwith.

McCarthism on the internet? That is pretty much what this is boiling down to.