OOOPS I see this has already been dicussed today folks.... sorry I probably should have came on earlier today to urge you all to contact your State reps and Congressmen in turning down these two bills!
ADVrider, KLRworld, Wikipedia, and thousands of other websites have blacked out today in protest of this infringement on our rights!
I contacted all my Reps and Congressmen today with this paragraph and I hope you will too, as this threatens this forum which we all enjoy.
I am your constituent, and I urge you to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. These bills will kill jobs and stifle innovation, undermine cyber security, risk censoring the American Internet, and provide cover for totalitarian regimes that want to undermine Internet freedom abroad.
In regards to House Bills SOPA and PIPA I feel ‘The proposals represent a blunt attack on freedom of speech, based upon a deeply flawed understanding of how the internet works.’
I would urge you to see the truth and not take part in passing these Bills.
It's time to quit trying to put bandaids on a disease such as internet piracy.
We can't sign new legislation into law just because lobbyist put millions into the Gov.s pocket.
Looking at our Governments way of doing "Business" from in a third party perspective, makes it quite embarassing for me to be an American.
Thank you,
Jim Wohlford
Here's some info from:
http://americancensorship.org/And:http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/sopa-and-pipa-the-wrong-tools-to-combat-online-piracy/2012/01/18/gIQA1yxR9P_story.htmlBy Joshua Topolsky, Wednesday, January 18, 9:47 PM
My day job is to write about and report on technology. I get paid to create content. Original content. The people I write for make money off the words I commit to paper (or, you know, a Web page). I’m a content creator in the truest sense. That’s how I earn a living.
In another life, in another time, I made a different kind of content. I used to produce music, I was in bands, and I traveled the world disc jockeying. I got paid then to create content, putting out records (real, vinyl records) and helping other bands to make the kind of music they wanted to make.
Joshua Topolsky
An authoritative voice on technology and consumer electronics, Joshua Topolsky is the founding editor-in-chief of The Verge, a technology news and information Web site, and the former editor-in-chief of Engadget. He is the resident tech expert for NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, Bloomberg TV and G4’s “Attack of the Show.” A lifelong gadget enthusiast, Joshua used his first computer at age 6 (a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A), and has been breaking apart and reassembling gadgets since phones had rotary dialers.
Who’s involved and what are the stakes?: A look at the politicians, companies and lobbying groups involved in the dispute over Stop Online Piracy Act.
As a content creator, I fully understand how precious ownership is and how painful theft can be. In fact, a sample of one of my records was used in a snippet of a car commercial in the early 2000s. The song was recorded by a jingle-maker who clearly figured no one would mind that he didn’t produce entirely original content. I was never compensated for what was blatant theft — and you know it’s bad when friends call you up on the phone and tell you they just heard your song on TV.
Yet I oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) — two laws that are doing the rounds in Washington — ostensibly meant to protect content creators from theft in the form of piracy.
And you should, too.
If you don’t know what SOPA is, you should probably spend some time on Wikipedia investigating the bill. Of course, Wikipedia shut down its site Wednesday to voice opposition to the laws (Google, Reddit and several other sites also protested similarly), so I guess that wouldn’t have been a good day to get your facts.
If Wikipedia is still unavailable by the time you read this, let me quickly explain the law. (As I said, there are actually two laws making waves, but for the sake of brevity, I’m only going to focus on SOPA.)
The gist of the bill is that it gives content creators the power to force ISPs, search engines or payment services to shut down access to a Web site that the owner believes violated its copyright. On its face, the bill is designed to stop access to foreign Web sites that are profiting off of stolen content. (U.S.-based business can simply be dragged into court.) In reality, it’s much more insidious than that.
Say a French company just started a social networking site in which users can upload videos of themselves singing. Now let’s say some kids upload a video of themselves singing their favorite Britney Spears song, not even playing back the original recording but simply singing along innocently to a song they like.
In the eyes of Spears’s record label or any number of parties associated with her continued cash flow, that might very well look like an instance of piracy — and indeed, major labels have had content pulled off YouTube for similar “violations.” All the label has to do is send a letter to someone such as your ISP and request that the service stop routing traffic to the offending site, and, boom, no more French-sharing site for U.S. Internet users. And what’s really scary is that U.S. Internet service providers have immunity when it comes to what they can pull from their networks, so that French site might not even have a clear path to resolving the issue.
Now take that concept and begin to apply it across all the places you could potentially find “infringing” material. Sites about art, sites about movies, sites that let users generate content of all types — some of that content containing pieces of other work that should be considered fair use by any modern standard. Suddenly, a lot of destinations on the Internet will begin to look like island vacation spots — that is, they’re really hard to get to. And the impact won’t just be cultural or legal; the technical workings of the Internet itself will be dramatically affected.
As my colleague Nilay Patel said when comparing online piracy to DVD piracy in New York City: It’s “the effective equivalent of blowing up every road, bridge and tunnel in New York to keep people from getting to one bootleg [DVD] stand in Union Square — but leaving the stand itself alone.”
Now to my point. The SOPA and PIPA bills are being driven through our government by lobbyists who have been given a mandate to protect private companies and their profits by any means necessary. As a part of a private company that makes its money through content creation and delivery, I understand the sentiment — I just disagree with the solution.
SOPA and PIPA are like taking a sledgehammer to something when you need a scalpel. The laws are too far-reaching and too simplistic to accurately police real piracy online, and they have been created by people who either don’t fully understand the Internet or can’t appreciate its value.
Free speech and common sense demand a better and more thoughtful law. That law has to come from an organic place, built by the people and companies that live and work on the Internet. Google, Facebook and Twitter, it’s time to get your lobbyists on the phone.
Joshua Topolsky is the founding editor in chief of the Verge, a technology news Web site
And: (NaturalNews) On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, NaturalNews.com went "dark" to protest SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" that is actually a thinly-veiled government censorship effort. We are also protesting PIPA, the "Protect IP Act," which is similarly destructive in its effects. You may have arrived at this page from our mock "seizure" index page which depicts what might happen if SOPA becomes law.
This is crucial for all NaturalNews readers and fans to understand: If SOPA becomes law, NaturalNews.com will be shut down. In fact, the proposed law contains a specific provision -- section 105 -- which allows the U.S. government to shut down websites it claims "endanger public health."
Given that NaturalNews openly and repeatedly advocates things like natural sunlight and vitamin C -- both of which the government has said are dangerous -- our website could be seized by the government under SOPA. And that doesn't even consider our public stance against routine vaccinations, processed food chemicals and dangerous prescription medications (which the government is always trying to push on the public to kill people before they live long enough to collect social security).
If passed into law, SOPA would shut down NaturalNews, InfoWars, Drudge, Lew Rockwell, Reddit and many other alternative news websites
Make no mistake about the seriousness of this issue: If SOPA (or PIPA) becomes law, it will sooner or later result in the government seizure and shutdown of virtually all alternative news websites -- especially those that disagree with the criminality of the current corrupt political regime in Washington.
Imagine an internet without NaturalNews.com. Imagine the liberty movement without InfoWars.com. Imagine the entire world wide web being "sanitized" by the government to remove any websites that do not agree with the government's official position on finance, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, pharmaceuticals and vaccines. That's what we're facing if SOPA becomes law: A virtual wipeout of all truth across the internet, leaving only the lies of "official" government information... the Ministry of Truth, in other words.
The Internet is the vehicle for restoring freedom and crushing tyranny
Why is the U.S. government working so feverishly to crush independent, truthful information on the internet? Because the globalist controllers realize that the internet is the last bastion of freedom in a world run by global elite corporatists.
While the global elite own and run the mainstream (corporate whore) media, and they own Congress, and they own all the influential non-profits such as the wholly corrupt American Cancer Society, they do not yet control the internet! This freaks them out, especially when they see so much truth being produced by liberty-loving individuals who are exposing the neocons, the socialists, and the criminal-minded thugs who run Wall Street and the White House.
They are desperate to crush internet freedom and SOPA is the tool they hope to use to accomplish that. This is why your opposition to SOPA is absolutely crucial. It's also why internet giants such as Wikipedia and Reddit have joined in this one-day protest against the tyranny of SOPA and what is fast becoming a government-sponsored "information terrorism" campaign against free speech.
Take action NOW - or you will lose internet free speech forever
This is an absolute must: Take action today to voice your opposition to SOPA. Here's how you can do that:
Click this link to email your Representative:
http://house.gov/htbin/findrep(Use the little envelope icon that appears to the right of the picture to send them an email.)
And click here to email your U.S. Senator:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm(Use the "web form" link.)
Send your representatives and Senator a short message that covers the following fundamental points:
* You oppose SOPA.
* You will not support or vote for any candidate that supports SOPA.
* Urge them to vote against SOPA.
You can also call the capitol switchboard at: (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected with your representatives.
Obama may sign SOPA even if he says he opposes it
It is crucial that you take action now, because even though SOPA has been "shelved" and Obama has withdrawn his support for it, remember that Obama also promised he would veto the NDAA, yet he quietly and sneakily signed that on New Year's Eve, stripping Americans of their due process rights (
http://www.naturalnews.com/034537_NDAA_Bill_of_Rights_Obama.html).
Just because Obama says he opposes something doesn't mean he won't sign it! And believe me, the tactics of all these evil minions in Washington is to operate in darkness, meaning they will delay SOPA when people are paying attention but then, a few months later, after public awareness has waned, they will insidiously attach it to some spending bill and quietly make it law. One day you will wake up and all your favorite websites will simply be GONE. Remember, the government has already shut down 84,000 websites with no due process (
http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-shuts-down-84000-websites-by-mista...).
That's why you need to voice your opposition to SOPA right now and take a stand for internet Free Speech.
If you don't, you may very well wake up one day and find NaturalNews.com shut down, InfoWars.com removed from the 'net, and then your only remaining news options will be CNN, Fox, MSNBC and all the other sources of complete mind-controlled drivel that the corporate "sellout" establishment wants to drill into your head.
Finally, share this article on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Spread the word about SOPA. Encourage others to take action. Remember: The internet is the last bastion of freedom in our modern world. If we lose the internet, the corrupt criminals and tyrants who run Wall Street and Washington D.C. will have total, unrelenting control over all information, and your freedom will be suffocated under a police state agenda of total disinformation.
Spread the word. Take action. Protect freedom! Protect the People against government censorship!
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/034682_SOPA_online_piracy_protest.html#ixzz1jsOcLZbr
