yeah we only had 20,000 letters sent in by consumer groups and a huge twitter campaign #debill.
All that meant was a discussion where the MP in charge of the bill thought that the IP address meant Intellectual Property address and all of Labour turning up for 5 mins to vote it through before the general election..
There's a few enquiries into the bill (Ofcom, parliamentary enquiry etc). I believe the current government is pretty opposed to it (Conservatives and Lib Dem both value the individuals freedom). Also since the majority of ISPs are completely opposed to it I doubt it'll ever get enforced.
If only Google or Facebook would use their homepage status to get the word out to the majority of the population. A blacked-out Google Doodle or a notification at the top of the Facebook newsfeed would go a very long way.
Fair enough, and I saw their newspaper ad also. That said, I think any real attempt at killing this bill needs to include a show of grassroots opposition, not merely trying to out-hollywood hollywood with money and public testimony.
Unfortunately I doubt Facebook will even mention the SOPA law. Google might put a small piece of text on the bottom of the home page about it, but even then that's a big "maybe."
I don't think Google should politicise its homepage, same goes for Facebook. Once you start opening the floodgates, you start to polarise your service to political persuasions.
No. The congressional hearing only just started, no voting yet. Now is a good time to call your US rep (if you live in the US) http://www.contactingthecongress.org/ . I was surprised that several of my IL reps did not have a stance on the issue! Calling is better than emailing. I know, it's a backwards system.
Two Senators, one Congressman. If you live in one of the 50 states, you have three federal lawmakers who represent you.
If you have multiple residences or an office in another district, you might have more relevant congresscritters who you'd want to call, even if you can't directly vote for them.
the more government oppression applied to the Internet - the sooner a government oppressure resistant alternative would emerge. The current Internet is a great thing, yet it is fundamentally flawed by being that vulnerable to any whimse of concentrated political and economical interest.
While it can't be presicely described how the future free Internet would look, it is possble to imagine some modern implementation of something like the old Fido network with a set of satellites and cables/floats in the international space and waters and the next generation WiFi that will have on the scale of couple orders of magnitude greater range.
Imagine something like a mashup between bittorrent, usenet, and TOR (store & forward + P2P) integrated into a web browser client front-end.
This sort of thing has been on my mind for years now, but it never occurred to me that it could actually be a necessary invention for maintaining a free and open internet in the developed world.
I can't wait for someone to post a link to the Pirate Bay in the comments, thereby providing legal justification for taking down sites that criticize SOPA.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadAll that meant was a discussion where the MP in charge of the bill thought that the IP address meant Intellectual Property address and all of Labour turning up for 5 mins to vote it through before the general election..
Peter Mandleson is an evil evil person though.
edit: I withdraw my criticism, see below.
I haven't been able to get the stream to start all morning.
Email from EFF's site:
http://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?a...
Email from OpenCongress:
http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/new?bil...
Snailmail from SendWrite:
https://sendwrite.com/sopa/
Petition from DemandProgress:
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/pipa_house/
And there's good, old-fashioned phone calls: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
Is that a Chicago politics thing?
If you have multiple residences or an office in another district, you might have more relevant congresscritters who you'd want to call, even if you can't directly vote for them.
"The service is not available. Please try again later."
:/
While it can't be presicely described how the future free Internet would look, it is possble to imagine some modern implementation of something like the old Fido network with a set of satellites and cables/floats in the international space and waters and the next generation WiFi that will have on the scale of couple orders of magnitude greater range.
Imagine something like a mashup between bittorrent, usenet, and TOR (store & forward + P2P) integrated into a web browser client front-end.
This sort of thing has been on my mind for years now, but it never occurred to me that it could actually be a necessary invention for maintaining a free and open internet in the developed world.
It's only a Hamming distance of 3 from the real name.