SOPA, could it ? the internet?
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Every other tweet today has been about SOPA and American Censorship Day.
If you haven't been following tech news closely, you probably have no idea what either of those things mean.
Here's a breakdown of what's going on and why everyone is so concerned. It's a big deal for tech innovators everywhere.
What is SOPA?
SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act. It is one of two bills being considered by congress today. The other is the Protect-IP Act.
They are well-intentioned. They want to prevent piracy and copyright infringement. But they do so in an overly-aggressive, innovation-endangering way. They allow the entertainment industry to censor sites they feel "engage in, enable or facilitate" infringement.
The issues with SOPA:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes SOPA as the "blacklist bill" because it would "allow the U.S. government and private corporations to create a blacklist of censored websites, and cut many more off from their ad networks and payment providers."
That means the Attorney General would have the power to cut off select websites from search engines like Google. It could also cut off advertisers and payment processors like Visa from the sites. The Attorney General could essentially ? all of a site's traffic and revenue in a matter of days.
SOPA only allows targeted sites five days to submit an appeal. That doesn't leave much time for them to defend themselves before losing their site and their revenue altogether.
What tech companies and innovators are saying about SOPA:
The heavy regulation SOPA implies isn't sitting well with many of tech's best and brightest. People from AOL, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Zynga, and Facebook have all signed a letter to congress that opposes SOPA.* The letter states:
"Since their enactment in 1998, the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions for online service providers have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry’s growth and success. While we work together to find additional ways to target foreign 'rogue sites,' we should not jeopardize a foundational structure that has worked for content owners and Internet companies alike and provides certainty to innovators with new ideas for how people create, find, discuss and share information lawfully online.”
What is American Censorship Day?
The reason you're reading about SOPA so much is because congress is reviewing both acts today. As such, EFF, Public Knowledge, Free Software Foundation and Demand Progress have named today American Censorship Day. They're encouraging people all over the web to fight for "Internet freedom."
If you haven't been following tech news closely, you probably have no idea what either of those things mean.
Here's a breakdown of what's going on and why everyone is so concerned. It's a big deal for tech innovators everywhere.
What is SOPA?
SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act. It is one of two bills being considered by congress today. The other is the Protect-IP Act.
They are well-intentioned. They want to prevent piracy and copyright infringement. But they do so in an overly-aggressive, innovation-endangering way. They allow the entertainment industry to censor sites they feel "engage in, enable or facilitate" infringement.
The issues with SOPA:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes SOPA as the "blacklist bill" because it would "allow the U.S. government and private corporations to create a blacklist of censored websites, and cut many more off from their ad networks and payment providers."
That means the Attorney General would have the power to cut off select websites from search engines like Google. It could also cut off advertisers and payment processors like Visa from the sites. The Attorney General could essentially ? all of a site's traffic and revenue in a matter of days.
SOPA only allows targeted sites five days to submit an appeal. That doesn't leave much time for them to defend themselves before losing their site and their revenue altogether.
What tech companies and innovators are saying about SOPA:
The heavy regulation SOPA implies isn't sitting well with many of tech's best and brightest. People from AOL, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Zynga, and Facebook have all signed a letter to congress that opposes SOPA.* The letter states:
"Since their enactment in 1998, the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions for online service providers have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry’s growth and success. While we work together to find additional ways to target foreign 'rogue sites,' we should not jeopardize a foundational structure that has worked for content owners and Internet companies alike and provides certainty to innovators with new ideas for how people create, find, discuss and share information lawfully online.”
What is American Censorship Day?
The reason you're reading about SOPA so much is because congress is reviewing both acts today. As such, EFF, Public Knowledge, Free Software Foundation and Demand Progress have named today American Censorship Day. They're encouraging people all over the web to fight for "Internet freedom."
Comments
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Old article btw, this is just to discuss SOPA
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Would it ? the internet? No. But sites like youtube and other user contributed sites will get killed off. To me all I see is a bunch of legit sites being shut down, like I mentioned youtube and other sites for aspiring movie makers, musicians, artists, etc... will be hit the hardest. It will seemingly be harder to promote your work on the internet if it is passed and approved. But pirating won't stop, or slow down, it will just create a new lane which makes it even harder to stop.
It's like using medicine to cure things, you may temporarily fix one issue, but in doing say you end up creating a future problem that's worst and harder to stop than the original.
You can't stop hackers and pirates. -
These old ass politicians take down anything that they don't understand. They want the public to go back to the 80s where info was hard to get.
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These old ass politicians take down anything that they don't understand. They want the public to go back to the 80s where info was hard to get.
Libraries aren't/weren't hard to get info from. Same thing you search for what you want and read. They also contained less ? . -
ThaChozenWun wrote: »Libraries aren't/weren't hard to get info from. Same thing you search for what you want and read. They also contained less ? .
trust me, The net is the only way we even know about half of these things right after it happens. Besides, the library is in many ways outdated cause print media is damn near obsolete. -
this, basically. you could do a lot to the internet without killing it off.ThaChozenWun wrote: »Would it ? the internet? No. But sites like youtube and other user contributed sites will get killed off.
