Stop Internet Censorship!

[Bob Hubbard]

Stop American Censorship

On Wednesday Jan. 18th thousands of sites will go dark to protest SOPA & PIPA, two US bills racing through Congress that threaten prosperity, online security, and freedom of expression.

On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill - PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House - to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity. We need internet companies to follow Reddit's lead and stand up for the web, as we internet users are doing every day.

Here are a few easy things you can do:

• Educate yourself about how SOPA and PIPA work.
• Print and mail letters to your state’s senators and representatives, urging them not to support this. Physical mail is harder to ignore than email. It piles up. You can find representatives’ addresses here and senators’ addresses here. Remember that PIPA is a Senate bill and SOPA is a House of Representatives bill.
• Call your senators and representatives on the phone and urge them not to support the bills. See above links for phone numbers or click here to get a quick list of representatives based on where you live.

Otherwise someday, you may see this instead of a login sign, just because someone wanted this site taken down.

 

[Tez3]

On the Wikipedia site it suggests that non Americans also contact their own governments, I will contact my Memeber of Parliament, William Hague who is also the Foreign Secrectary. 10 Downing Street appreciates contact too!
For the UK http://www.parliament.uk/about/contacting/mp/

 

[rlobrecht]

Bob,
Thank you for doing your part to spread the word.

Rick

 

[shesulsa]

Communications effectuated. Thank you for posting this! This will be my only readable communications today.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

This is what pisses me off. If these bills pass, I'd probably have to shut down both MartialTalk and KenpoTalk as I can't afford to hire a full time lawyer to deal with the BS it would cause and the increased -personal- liability.

If someone signed up here and posted a link to a bootleg, they could take out the whole site. Never mind it's against our TOS, not what we're about, we remove on detection, etc. See below.

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act [h=2]Impact on websites[/h] [h=3]Websites that host user content[/h] Opponents have warned that SOPA would have a negative impact on online communities. Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites such as YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar," she says.[SUP][29][/SUP] The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) warned that websites Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seemed likely to shut down if the bill becomes law.[SUP][30][/SUP] Policy analysts for New America Foundation say this legislation would enable law enforcement to take down an entire domain due to something posted on a single blog, arguing, "an entire largely innocent online community could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority."[SUP][31][/SUP]
Additional concerns include the impact on common Internet functions such as linking or access data from the cloud. EFF claimed the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results[SUP][32][/SUP] and on services such as Twitter.[SUP][33][/SUP] Christian Dawson, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits.[SUP][34][/SUP] The Electronic Frontier Foundation have stated that the requirement that any site must self-police user generated content would impose significant liability costs and explains "why venture capitalists have said en masse they won’t invest in online startups if PIPA and SOPA pass."[SUP][35][/SUP]
Proponents of the bill countered these claims, arguing that filtering is already common. Michael O'Leary of the MPAA testified on November 16 that the act's effect on business would be more minimal, noting that at least 16 countries already block websites, and that the Internet still functions in those countries.[SUP][36][/SUP] MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd noted that Google figured out how to block sites when China requested it.[SUP][37][/SUP] Some ISPs in Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Italy blocked The Pirate Bay after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and a coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit.[SUP][38][/SUP] Maria Pallante of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.[SUP][36][/SUP]
[h=3]Weakening of "safe harbor" protections[/h] The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, that provides a "safe harbor" for websites that host content. Under that provision, copyright owners who felt that a site was hosting infringing content are required to request the site to remove the infringing material within a certain amount of time.[SUP][39][/SUP][SUP][40][/SUP][SUP][41][/SUP] SOPA would bypass this "safe harbor" provision by placing the responsibility for detecting and policing infringement onto the site itself, and allowing judges to block access to websites "dedicated to theft of U.S. property."[SUP][42][/SUP]
According to critics of the bill such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bill's wording is vague enough that a single complaint about a site could be enough to block it, with the burden of proof resting on the site. A provision in the bill states that any site would be blocked that "is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation." Critics have read this to mean that a site must actively monitor its content and identify violations to avoid blocking, rather than relying on others to notify it of such violations.[SUP][30][/SUP][SUP][43][/SUP]
Law professor Jason Mazzone wrote, "Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice."[SUP][44][/SUP]
Goodlatte stated, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]."[SUP][45][/SUP][SUP][46][/SUP]
O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."[SUP][17][/SUP]

 

[MaxiMe]

I look at it this way. Basically Lawyers that are wannabee network, social, economic, etc. engineers. Damn time people just accept the fact that I don't know is an ok answer and deffer to people that know what the hell they are doing.

Sorry just gettin a little pissed about this (like us techies don't have enuf stuff to watch over).

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I'm not in the mood to watch 2 sites I've spent the last 10 years killing myself over, taken out by a bunch of clueless technobleeps.

 

[MA-Caver]

I don't blame you Bob, this is a very useful site for it's genre or focus (Martial Arts), and a worthy addition to the net for information, reliable information about Martial Arts. The discussions provide both pros and cons without any prodding, on techniques, teaching methods, school management and so on. It's edukayshunel and that we need on any given subject.

One of the ironies however. Is censorship exists on MT. We have a ****ing profanity filter and we have age limits and there are limits to the type of images that can be posted here. There's a lot of self-censorship as well which is a good thing and done with regards to others as well. Some of us have posted pics/articles/links with questionable content and put "warnings" in the subject or starter heading of the post/thread. Allowing the folks to choose whether or not to click on the subject. We have mods and admins who can and have removed content offensive to the users. Arent' those forms of censorship? Exactly what KIND of censorship should be noted and protested against and which kind are acceptable.

 

[MaxiMe]

I don't blame you Bob, this is a very useful site for it's genre or focus (Martial Arts), and a worthy addition to the net for information, reliable information about Martial Arts. The discussions provide both pros and cons without any prodding, on techniques, teaching methods, school management and so on. It's edukayshunel and that we need on any given subject.

One of the ironies however. Is censorship exists on MT. We have a ****ing profanity filter and we have age limits and there are limits to the type of images that can be posted here. There's a lot of self-censorship as well which is a good thing and done with regards to others as well. Some of us have posted pics/articles/links with questionable content and put "warnings" in the subject or starter heading of the post/thread. Allowing the folks to choose whether or not to click on the subject. We have mods and admins who can and have removed content offensive to the users. Arent' those forms of censorship? Exactly what KIND of censorship should be noted and protested against and which kind are acceptable.

"Technobleep" I think Bob did a great job of self censoring on that one

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I don't blame you Bob, this is a very useful site for it's genre or focus (Martial Arts), and a worthy addition to the net for information, reliable information about Martial Arts. The discussions provide both pros and cons without any prodding, on techniques, teaching methods, school management and so on. It's edukayshunel and that we need on any given subject.

One of the ironies however. Is censorship exists on MT. We have a ****ing profanity filter and we have age limits and there are limits to the type of images that can be posted here. There's a lot of self-censorship as well which is a good thing and done with regards to others as well. Some of us have posted pics/articles/links with questionable content and put "warnings" in the subject or starter heading of the post/thread. Allowing the folks to choose whether or not to click on the subject. We have mods and admins who can and have removed content offensive to the users. Arent' those forms of censorship? Exactly what KIND of censorship should be noted and protested against and which kind are acceptable.

As a community, we have standards. Those standards have evolved a bit over the past decade, based on member input in part. Part of it's based on the idea of what type of community we should have, which is part my vision, part member view. But this is all by our choice. The government doesn't have a right to tell me "Bob, you cant let your members swear." That's my call. Some sites allow it, some don't, we're in the safer side of the middle. These bills however, don't leave us much choice. If a member posts a link to a warez site, they can pretty much nuke us, without trial. Without giving us a chance to remove the TOS violation. They can hold me responsible personally, even if I was on a cruise ship out of touch at the time. I don't like that. I don't like the rest of what I've read about this either.

This isn't about helping authors and musicians and photographers and movie makers.
It's about a power grab by an industry that 20 years ago tried to make VCR's illegal, who can't cope with a changing world, who is buying our corrupt politicians and writing laws for them to sign away our rights to decide for ourselves.
It doesn't stop bootlegging. Just makes it a little harder to get to.

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
Looks at things. Scares the crap out of me.

If the Attorney General served reddit with an order to remove links to a domain, we would be required to scrub every post and comment on the site containing the domain and censor the links out, even if the specific link contained no infringing content. We would also need to implement a system to automatically censor the domain from any future posts or comments. This places a measurable burden upon the site's technical infrastructure. It also damages one of the most important tenets of reddit, and the internet as a whole – free and open discussion about whatever the **** you want.

We have about 1.5 Million posts. How much time would we have to put into to check that many posts to ensure that we got everything? Sure, some quick SQL querries get most....but then what?
Oh yeah, our members start 'working around' the filter, using all the tricks they used to get swear words around. The AG sees that, guess who gets the bill?
Me.
Guess what happens to MT, and 11 years of martial arts history.
404 - Site Not Found.

Don't care about MT that much? That's ok. You'll be able to surf an internet like it was in 1990, all content controlled by the MPAA and RIAA and their servants, the US DOJ.
Over reacting?

Maybe. But the folks behind Wikipedia, Reddit, and -tens of thousands- of other sites, thousands of people who actually work in the internet who understand things way better than I do, including the guy who invented the thing, Vince Cerf think this is a bad idea. A very bad idea.

The folks in favor of it?

They didn't even want to hear from the experts!!!!!!

One after the other, members of the U.S. House of Representatives professed — nay, bragged about — approaching this weighty legislation from the vantage point of someone who is not “a nerd” or a “tech expert.”

Who do you want deciding your future?
An ignorant whore bought and paid for by someone who wants to shut you down, or someone with an educated clue who understands the real issue and consequences?

Send me the nerds.

 

[MaxiMe]

I say NO!!! to the old AOL days.

100% with ya on this one Bob.
Most of the Tech folks I know spend more of our time already fixing stuff rather than doing PM and future planning like we should be able to do (blame it on the tech bubble or whatever). IT and Trelecom have been getting leaner for years and now there just isn'rt enuf time in the day to do it all. so you prioritize and schedule to make the most of the time you have.

 

[Arinai]

I hate the very idea of this with the fire of 10,000 suns. These imbeciles deserve to be cursed with a plague of 1,000,000 fleas. Just my 2 cents.

In all reality, these two bills are taking away one of our important rights from the Constitution; our 1st amendment right to free speech. Not only does this go against our basic rights that our forefathers outlined for us, its going against the wants/needs/rights of a vast majority of the modern American peoples.

The government is taking a big risk with the American peoples by trying to pass these bills. It's in the Declaration of Independence for crying out loud!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

In all reality, if the government makes our people unhappy enough, with these unrealistic bills, the American people could overthrow them and implement a new government.

It is, Sir, the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law. Daniel Webster (1782-1852) American lawyer, politician, orator and statesman, discussing the limitations of state’s rights and the supremacy of federal law in his “Second Speech on Foote’s Resolution” in the U.S. Senate, on January 26, 1830.

What happened to our Constitutional rights? Is the American government so corrupt that they do not even follow the laws written out in the founding documents of their very creation?

I personally think that these bills will never hold up in the U.S. Supreme Court when it finally reaches them (after all, no American is simply just going to live with something that obviously goes against the Constitution.)

The issue with that is how long is it going to take before the people get a clue and take it to the U.S.S.C.? How long before they deem it unconstitutional?

Our government is obviously corrupt. Otherwise this bill would never had come close to passing. Its all just about the money to them.

 

[jks9199]

As they stand, these bills amount to using bunker buster bombs to kill dead ants.

Yes, there are legitimate and serious concerns about on-line piracy and copyright thefts. But the approaches currently being pushed by the RIAA and MPAA disregard the realities of modern media and distribution. I don't have an easy solution at hand -- but this sure as hell ain't it.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

January 19, 2012
​

Dear Robert,

Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns.

No, I don't think you do.

I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights.

Sure, that sounds good. How about a bill that does that?

By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace.

So, you mean you need this bill to pass because with out it, you wouldn't be able to take down pirate sites like MegaUpload? So, if that's the case, then how'd the Justice Dept. manage to take down MU and arrest people in New Zealand without your bill? Surely you realize that your bill does nothing to help actually remove warez sites, just puts a little easily circumvented condom on the pipe.

I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed.

Is that because you have read and understand the bill, or because thousands of concerned citizens basically broke your website, crashed your email and made your interns ears sore from hours of non-stop phone calls. My ******** detector says it's the later.

I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet.

*Sniff* *Sniff*, no, that's not what you're committed to. You're committed to giving us lip service while your owners at the MPAA rewrite this law and tell you what to say. If you gave a damn about the Constitutional Rights of Americans you would never have lent your name to this piece of trash.

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.





Sincerely,
Kirsten E. Gillibrand
United States Senator

Like I'm sure you even read my email, given you didn't address a single point of concern. Thanks for the form letter. Your lack of concern is noted.

Bob Hubbard
Voter.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

http://sopastrike.com/numbers

SOPA and PIPA sent back to the drawing board. War's not over, they just pushed the date back.

Chris Dodd is threatening Obama and others opposed to this bill with withholding the MPAA's campaign money. Isn't it about time we strip special interests of their ability to buy votes?


SOPA and PIPA btw would have done nothing to assist in the take down of MegaUpload. It was taken out by use of existing laws.
The domain seized, servers seized. People in other countries arrested.
All without PIPA or SOPA
MU's back up in fact, by IP only.
Neither PIPA and SOPA would have stopped that either.

Flawed legislation by bought law makers.

Time for We The People to retake their government.

 

[MaxiMe]

Flawed legislation by bought law makers.

Time for We The People to retake their government.

Pitchforks and torches..nahh to old school, how about Megapixles and electrons................ Film\record them and post it all over the place. Then push a new button on the electroinc voting machine.

 

[noob]

Too many crooks in government trying to pass these bills. Need to get lists of the names of senators that are voting for it so the public can hound them.