PIPA

Reddit was among the leaders in the protest movement brought the SOPA/PIPA fast-track…

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged congress fia freeinternet freespeech Google+ PIPA reddit SOPA on by (updated 4617 days ago)

Reddit was among the leaders in the protest movement brought the SOPA/PIPA fast-track to a grinding halt recently and for that they deserve tremendous praise.

While complaining about bad stuff is easy to do, at least with the internet as it's constituted today, coming up with real positive alternative ideas is a lot harder.

Thankfully Reddit has stepped up to the plate with a proposal for the Free Internet Act. Unlike SOPA and PIPA which were largely written in secret by lobbyists for the old-school content industry, FIA is an open-source at attempt at writing legislation. As it stands today, it contains some real common sense ideas for true copyright reform that would enable and encourage creativity rather than stifling it in the name of preserving entrenched business models.

Of course since it's not coming from lobbyists that are proving huge quantities of campaign donations and junkets and it includes common sense ideas, it has absolutely no chance of passage. On the other hand, since the legislators took notice when hundreds of thousands of actual voters stood up and said no, anything is possible.

Go over and take a look at the FIA in progress and then content your senators and representatives and demand that they introduce this bill and vote for it.

#sopa #pipa #freespeech #fia #reddit #congress #freeinternet

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The Free Internet Act is Reddit's crowdsourced SOPA alternative
If you’re fed up with the way the debate about online piracy is going, perhaps you should draft your own legislation like the folks at Reddit. The Free Internet Act is currently open and freely-editable over at Google Docs, and focuses on preventing censorship of nearly any kind. Rather than put the rights of content owners first, the FIA aims to "promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation by preventing the restriction of liberty and preventing the means of censorship." T…

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Paulo Coehlo is living proof that we don't need more anti-piracy laws

This entry was posted in copyright media and tagged acta Google+ PIPA SOPA on by (updated 4635 days ago)

He made a very healthy living after "pirating" his own book by posting it on thepiratebay.org. Once readers had the opportunity to experience his writing for free, word spread and people actually started buying his books and made them bestsellers.

#acta #sopa #pipa

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More evidence that any sort of extra-judicial copyright enforcement is likely to…

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Google+ PIPA SOPA on by (updated 4639 days ago)

More evidence that any sort of extra-judicial copyright enforcement is likely to cause more problems than it solves. Making it easier for so-called rights-holders to take down content without truly proving that it infringes on copyrights, will undoubtedly lead to chilling effects and censorship.

#sopa #pipa

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EXCLUSIVE: How The NFL Fumbled Chrysler's Commercial
Chrysler's Clint Eastwood ad was the most controversial commercial (for various reasons) of this year's Super Bowl. But it wasn't controversial enough that someone acting on behalf of the NFL should h…

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This is a prime example of why it's so important for us to stop legislation like… 1

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Google+ halftimeinamerica PIPA SOPA on by (updated 4643 days ago)

This is a prime example of why it's so important for us to stop legislation like SOPA and PIPA. Even with the existing copyright laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, "rights-holders" are abusing the process and it would get exponentially worse if we increased the "protections" they get under law.

You can see Chrysler's "Halftime in America" ad on the automaker's site at http://media.chrysler.com/homepage.do;jsessionid=D5D361FB66F4FA32CE6E3C886C71706B?mid=1 and even download a copy.

There is nothing whatsoever in that two minute clip that should violate any NFL copyrights, no mention of teams or players, no clips of games. This is just absurd. Stop the madness

#SOPA #PIPA #halftimeinamerica

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Chrysler's 'Halftime in America' Super Bowl commercial taken down from YouTube by NFL
One of the undisputed winners of last night's Super Bowl commercial competition had to be Chrysler's "Halftime in America" spot, but if you're expecting to find it on Chrysler's YouTube page, you'd……

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The Office of Technology Assessment was defunded by congress in 1995 2

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Google+ gov20The opengov PIPA SOPA on by (updated 4652 days ago)

At the time the house of representatives was controlled by republicans swept in during the 1994 elections on the back of the "contract with America." Who was their leader? One Rep Newt Gingrich (R-GA)

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"Only a Smarter Congress Can Make Better Internet Policy," writes +Daniel Schuman at the +Sunlight Foundation.

If you're still wondering how the problematic tech aspects of #SOPA & #PIPA made it into the bills, much less how they almost passed, Schuman lays it out for you: a "congressional technology lobotomy" in 1995, when Congress defunded its Office of Technology Assessment and made it very difficult to attract and retain top technology policy staffers.

If you're wondering why Congress doesn't get tech, start here.

Schuman: "The Office of Technology Assessment [http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_5/DATA/1972/9604.PDF] was created in 1972 to equip Congress with “new and effective means for securing competent, unbiased information concerning the physical, biological, economic, social, and political effects” of technology. OTA “was intended to facilitate congressional access to expertise and permit legislators to consider objectively information presented by the executive branch, interest groups, and other stakeholders to controversial policy questions,” in the words of a CRS report. It was a runaway success.

OTA’s small staff of experts (around 140 at its maximum) generated hundreds of reports http://www.fas.org/ota/otareports/ at the relatively modest cost of $20 million annually. Unfortunately, it was defunded in 1995 as part of a broader effort to make the Congress appear more efficient. Despite repeated calls for OTA’s reinstatement, nothing has filled the void, and policymaking has suffered."

Indeed. As we say here on the Interwebs, read the whole thing.

#opengov #gov20

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Only a Smarter Congress Can Make Better Internet Policy
Recent calls for technologists to hire lobbyists to educate Washington on internet issues miss a significant part of the big picture. Congress makes bad technology decisions because it has dismantled …

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Danny Sullivan explains with a real world example that gets repeated daily around…

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged content Google+ PIPA SOPA on by (updated 4654 days ago)

Danny Sullivan explains with a real world example that gets repeated daily around the world why we should not even bother to try and protect the business models of Rupert Murdoch and his cronies. They create artificial scarcity where there is no technical or logical reason for it and then wonder why people say "screw it" and just go to Pirate Bay or some other site that is streaming their content.

Don't protect big Hollywood, it doesn't deserve it. Advertisers should go to smaller online content creators like Leo Laporte, Revision3, Felicia Day and many others. Support their production efforts so they can distribute original content online and transform the entertainment and information business.

#sopa #pipa #content

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Watching last week's episode of The Simpsons turned out to be impossible despite all the money I already pay that gets filtered to Rupert Murdoch through DirectTV, Hulu and Netflix. Yet, if I wanted to fire up my computer, he was willing to give it to me for free. A weird lesson this taught my son; bad business model it seemed to me.

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Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”
Rupert, my son had a simple request. “Daddy, can we watch last week's episode of The Simpsons?” No, son, we can't. You can blame Rupert Murdoch for that. Rupert, I know you're all upset ab…

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You know how we keep hearing officials from the movie and music industry whine about… 1

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Google+ PIPA SOPA on by (updated 4655 days ago)

You know how we keep hearing officials from the movie and music industry whine about the hundreds of billions of dollars they lose to piracy? It looks like it's all made up, citing studies that were never apparently never done. You'd think that if someone had actually done these studies they would have stepped forward by now to present the data but it has never happened. It's long past time to dispense with SOPA, PIPA and any other anti-piracy bills they will probably spawn. Hollywood has no credibility.

#sopa #pipa

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Best breakdown I've seen yet of how the entertainment industry has virtually no hard evidence to back up their claims of massive financial losses from piracy. http://www.itworld.com/security/242587/best-evidence-showing-we-need-sopa-based-govt-studies-never-existed

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Best evidence showing we need SOPA based on 'govt studies' that never existed
No one disputes very seriously that there is a lot of content piracy going on, especially online.

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The next time you think about a our do-nothing congress, consider MPAA boss Chris… 11

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Google+ PIPA SOPA on by (updated 4657 days ago)

The next time you think about a our do-nothing congress, consider MPAA boss Chris Dodd's assessment in the aftermath of the anti-SOPA/PIPA internet protest this week. Instead of acknowledging the overreach of the bills and looking at alternative strategies for fighting piracy, he sees the problem as congress acting too slowly and not pushing the bills through before the citizenry had a chance to respond. This of course is exactly what happened in Sept 2001 when the Patriot Act was passed in just days with almost no one really knowing what was in the bill.

It sounds like we will have to be far more vigilant going forward, because Hollywood isn't going to go down without a fight and they will probably try and tack these provisions onto another bill somewhere along the way without anyone taking notice.

#sopa #pipa

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MPAA chairman Chris Dodd expresses regret over pro-SOPA strategy, calls for compromise
Former Senator and current MPAA chairman Chris Dodd has acknowledged that SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA have an image problem. Dodd says that the bills were largely considered a "slam dunk"…

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Where do your "representatives" stand?

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Google+ netfreedomWhere PIPA sop on by (updated 4658 days ago)

Where do your "representatives" stand?

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At day's end, +ProPublica reports more Congressmen publicly oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act

What has happened online today is unprecedented. As a result of the stand that that O'Reilly and many other organizations took, I saw stories about SOPA and PIPA bills on the evening news (along with the Daily Show and Colbert Report, on now) for the first time today.

Afterwards, my parents asked me about why Wikipedia and Google were protesting. Thankfully, I was well briefed: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/sopa-protectip.html

Moreover, at day's end ProPublica's Web application, "SOPA Opera," told an important tale.

This morning, according to ProPublica, U.S. Senators and Representatives were 80-31 for SOPA and PIPA this morning.

At day's end, SOPA and PIPA now have 68 supporters and 71 opponents.
http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/

The +OpenCongress Whip count tells a similar tale.

33 for PIPA, 36 against it.
http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Protect_IP_Act_Senate_whip_count

These bills have not been defeated — Senator Reid maintains that PIPA is slated to come up for a vote next week and Rep. Lamar Smith says he'll hold a markup of SOPA in February — but the context for their consideration is forever changed.

#sop #pipa #netfreedom

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Who in Congress Supports SOPA and PIPA/PROTECT-IP? | SOPA Opera | ProPublica
A comprehensive list of where members of Congress stand on the Stop Online Piracy and PROTECT-IP Acts.

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