Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, says the internet is facing a “major” threat from “people who want to control it on the sly” through “worrying laws” such as SOPA, the US anti-piracy act, and through the actions of internet giants.
CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (H.R. 3523), is a successor, of sorts, to the loathesome SOPA legislative proposal, which was shot down in flames earlier this year. EFF’s chilling analysis of the bill shows how it could be used to give copyright enforcers carte blanche to spy on Internet users and censoring the Internet (it would also give these powers to companies and governments who’d been embarrassed by sites like Wikileaks).
Continue reading… “CISPA is SOPA 2.0”
This may just be the best TED Talk video I’ve seen: listen.com/Rhapsody founder and extremely funny person (and soon-to-be debut science fiction author) Rob Reid examines the math behind the claims made by the copyright lobby and explains the mindbending awesomeness of the sums used to justify SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and the like. Here’s Ars Technica’s Ken Fisher discussing Reid’s philosophy…
Continue reading… “Copyright Math: the best TED Talk you’ll watch all year”
Other means of sharing are available if worst case scenarios becomes reality
The file-sharing landscape is slowly adjusting in response to the continued push for more anti-piracy tools, the final Pirate Bay verdict, and the raids and arrests in the Megaupload case. Faced with uncertainty and drastic changes at file-sharing sites, many users are searching for secure, private and uncensored file-sharing clients. Despite the image its name suggests, RetroShare is one such future-proof client.
The avalanche of negative file-sharing news over the past weeks hasn’t gone unnoticed to users and site operators.
From SOPA to Megaupload, there is a growing uncertainly about the future of sharing….
Continue reading… “Anonymous, decentralized and uncensored file-sharing is booming”
Two new laws proposed by US legislators, the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, have been attracting a very negative reaction from the web community over the past couple of months, which is today culminating in a day of protests. Aiming to curtail copyright infringement on the web by giving the US government unprecedented new powers, both SOPA and PIPA have been rejected as overreaching and unhelpful laws that cannot coexist with a free and open internet.
A lot of websites (most notably Wikipedia) are going dark today in protest of SOPA.
But the humor site The Oatmeal easily wins for its hilarious GIF about the proposed law. In its own way, it does a better job of explaining what SOPA means than a lot of the serious sites out there.
Here it is after the jump. Watch and laugh…
“[SOPA and its Senate counterpart Protect IP] allow people with lots of money, and lots of lawyers to take down Internet sites they don’t like”
Wednesday will be a day against an anti-piracy bill as the world’s biggest websites call for a day of dramatic action. They fear the legislation will reshape the Internet as we now know it.
Continue reading… “Wikipedia to go dark on Wednesday, Google to join protest against SOPA”
SOPA would set up US website blacklisting, require search engine censorship, and divide the Internet into “domestic” and “foreign” sites.
In L.P. Hartley’s novel, The Go-Between, he wrote, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” When Hartley wrote his novel of adolescent sexual awakening he knew nothing of the internet. Had he know he might have been shocked just how quickly the past became a foreign place.
Continue reading… “‘Borderless internet’ is officially dead”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.