I’ll be spending most of my day at the quarry throwing stuff in to show my support.
If it’s going to go dark, it had better hurry up. We’re more than half-way through Wednesday 18 January.
It’s also slang, at least in Peru, for going down on your woman.
And they are protesting this??
I suppose it’s a safe assumption that this is going to appear in every one of your posts from now on.
You guys are fooling around, but Wiki going ‘dark’ for 24 hours is pretty serious business.
This could actually make a difference in how the legislation is being presented to the general public.
It isn’t as if Wikipedia is not, at the most, two steps away from even the most elderly lawmakers.
Can you imagine when it goes down that children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren will be freaking out?
This bill is toast.
The crafter(s) maybe not, but this thing isn’t going to pass.
Think of it as… hmmmm… the voice of the people?
Too bad we didn’t do this with the PATRIOT ACT.
<insert old hippie grumble here>
If Wiki is going dark, how come I can still see it?
I think you grossly overestimate the importance of Wikipedia. It won’t affect Congress in any major way–they get most of their information from services like Lexis-Nexis. If you write or call your congresscritter, you’ll probably get the equivalent of a form letter response, but otherwise be largely ignored.
Try searching for a term.
You can get around their page, through a variety of methods though.
This messsage board and any other sponsored by Creative Loafing DEFINITELY has a dog in this fight. One of the provisions of the bill as drafted is that any site that even LINKS to a site that contains pirated content can be shut down. Think of all the thousands and thousands of links on this board. Are you sure that NONE of them link to pirated content.
Another widely-hated provision is that the board can simply be shut down for a COMPLAINT that it has links to sites with pirated material, no investigation needed. Think of all the lovely people who have passed through this message board over the years. Think of them having a great big hammer they can hit the SDMB with, without repercussions to them. That’s SOPA.
And thirdly, SOPA is the censor’s nose under the tent flap. You know damn well that if those Congresscritters can get away with censoring on the basis of piracy, a ton of them will be going after porn, hate speech, etc. immediately thereafter. I bet Joe Lieberman is practically wetting himself with glee.
Also, turns out they lied about the bill being withdrawn. The House markeup of the bill will continue in February. There’s an article about it on reddit’s blackout page.
So SDMB DOES have a dog in this fight, big time. I’m really surprised they did not recognize this fact. (My site is blacked out, but it’s really small potatoes.)
Are you sure that your conclusions are justified by the language of the bill?
Creative Loafing goes to certain lengths to ensure that infringement does not take place on this board and that posts do not help people engage in illegal activities off the board. Is that not accounted for under this law?
What do you mean by that, exactly? Copyright infringement, trademark infringement, counterfeiting, etc., are already illegal. The government can already take civil and criminal action to shut down operations that engage in them. Is this not already “censoring on the basis of piracy”?
Who lied, exactly?
A fair percentage of legislators, from what I’ve seen, use Wikipedia pretty frequently, and certainly many of their staff do. Probably just as much as Lexis-Nexis, since it’s largely easier to do. Of course, a fair few of them are probably not major internet users at all, but again, their staff are.
I’d also be surprised if they ignored their constituents’ opinions. They probably won’t decide how to vote based on nothing but constituent letters but I bet their staff are reading them as carefully as they read letters on any other issue – that is, pretty carefully, at least in the case of competent legislators.
Yes.
According to what I have read, all it takes is a complaint, from anyone, valid or invalid. So no, it is not accounted for under this law. And CL sees that we do not post copyrighted material HERE, but if someone here LINKS to copyrighted material illegally posted, the board still goes down. I do not think CL has much control over what is posted on other sites, nor patrols links to see that they do … do you?
Yes, but they must, you know, go to court and stuff. SOPA essentially puts the banhammer in anyone’s hands, no trial needed.
The people who have said (in other venues) that the bill is dead. It is not dead. No one in this thread has said so. YOU said that the DNS blocking provision had been removed from the bill, but as we all know, things that are removed from bills at one point have been known to be put back in at a later point.
The bill is still dead because Obama has promised to veto it.
I told them to get Michael Vick as a moderator…
Worse than that, it’s really more that they’ve said they’re going to remove the DNS blocking provisions. They have yet to do so from the version of the bill under consideration, so we only have a Congressman’s claim to that effect; he might not succeed at getting an amendment passed even assuming he makes a good-faith effort. And that doesn’t do anything to protect websites from the other, scarier provision you mentioned – the responsibility to remove links claimed to be “infringing”.
The DNS blocking provision sounds scary and is scary and could have majorly negative impacts on aspects of internet infrastructure, at least according to what I’m reading about. But I think the other provision is scarier. I don’t care that much if the government figures out some way to block The Pirate Bay or another group like that, as long as that’s all they do. The other provisions of the bill are the ones that will really have a chilling effect on forms of speech besides BitTorrenting movies.
He has not, however, promised to veto the very similar PROTECT IP Act, which contains essentially the same provisions. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, but he may have only promised to defeat the bill with more name recognition because he intends to sign the other, currently less infamous, bill.
Yes.
According to what I have read, all it takes is a complaint, from anyone, valid or invalid. So no, it is not accounted for under this law. And CL sees that we do not post copyrighted material HERE, but if someone here LINKS to copyrighted material illegally posted, the board still goes down. I do not think CL has much control over what is posted on other sites, nor patrols links to see that they do … do you?
Yes, but they must, you know, go to court and stuff. SOPA essentially puts the banhammer in anyone’s hands, no trial needed.
The people who have said (in other venues) that the bill is dead. It is not dead. No one in this thread has said so. YOU said that the DNS blocking provision had been removed from the bill, but as we all know, things that are removed from bills at one point have been known to be put back in at a later point.
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My opinion (and maybe that’s a sign that this thread should be moved elsewhere) is that the DNS blocking provision IS dead, given the current political situation. At least one senator who had sponsored the bill has announced he has changed his mind and now opposes it.
No, that’s jabon.
Ahhhhh, the voice of reason that I know and admire!! Thank you 