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Forum Index : Off topic archive. : Internet freedom - problems ahead

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vasi

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Joined: 23/03/2007
Location: Romania
Posts: 1697
Posted: 02:13pm 18 Jan 2012
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From OpenSUSE news:
End of January the US Congress will vote to pass two laws, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). If these laws pass they would enable copyright holders to get court orders against websites accused of doing or facilitating copyright infringement. So far so good, the openSUSE Project is against copyright violations.

We are a community that provides free and easy access to Free and Open Source Software. We innovate, integrate, polish, document, distribute, maintain and support one of the worlds best Linux distributions. We are working together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the worldwide Free and Open Source community. And in this community there is no room for copyright abuses. That however does not mean that the end justifies the means. We at openSUSE are opposed to the proposals because we depend on our users to not only be able to freely and openly contribute their code but also their opinion and other information. Why that is threatened by these proposals, you can read over at the EFF, or watch this video from Fight for the Future:

http://vimeo.com/31100268

http://sopastrike.com/strike
Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton
Elvish name: Mablung Miriel
Beyound Arduino Lang
 
Rastus

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Joined: 29/10/2010
Location: Australia
Posts: 301
Posted: 02:55pm 18 Jan 2012
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Hi Vasi,
While copywright may be well meaning,huge gains and losses are invovled.Realisticly it is going to take years to address this issue, and sadly everyone will loose something in the end.Cheers Rastus
see Rastus graduate advise generously
 
vasi

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Joined: 23/03/2007
Location: Romania
Posts: 1697
Posted: 07:41pm 18 Jan 2012
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Arduino site is also on protest today:
arduino.cc



Edited by vasi 2012-01-20
Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton
Elvish name: Mablung Miriel
Beyound Arduino Lang
 
vasi

Guru

Joined: 23/03/2007
Location: Romania
Posts: 1697
Posted: 07:39am 19 Jan 2012
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I guess any voter received this email:

[quote]Today was nuts, right?

Google launched a petition. Wikipedia voted to shut itself off. Senators' websites went down just from the sheer surge of voters trying to write them. NYC and SF geeks had protests that packed city blocks.

You made history today: nothing like this has ever happened before. Tech companies and users teamed up. Tens of millions of people who make the internet what it is joined together to defend their freedoms. The free network defended itself. Whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: from today forward, it will be much harder to mess up the internet.

The really crazy part? We might even win.

Approaching Monday's crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA. Last week there were 5. And it just takes just 41 solid "no" votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate. What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach.

But don't trust predictions. The forces behind SOPA & PIPA (mostly movie companies) can make small changes to these bills until they know they have the votes to pass. Members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, but they don't understand why--so they're easily duped by superficial changes. The Senate returns next week, and the next few days are critical. Here are two things to think about:

1. Plan on calling your Senator every day next week. Pick up the phone each morning and call your Senators' offices, until they vote "no" on cloture. If your site participated today, consider running a "Call the Senate" link all next week.

2. Tomorrow, drop in at your Senators' district offices. We don't have a cool map widget to show you the offices nearest you (we're too exhausted! any takers?). So do it the old fashioned way: use Google, or the phonebook to find the address, and just walk in, say you oppose PIPA, and urge the Senator to vote "no" on cloture. These drop-in visits make our spectacular online protests more tangible and credible.

That's it for now. Be proud and stay on it!

--Holmes, Tiffiniy, and the whole Fight for the Future team.

___

P.S. Huge credit goes to participants in the 11/16 American Censorship Day protest: Mozilla, 4chan, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, and thousands of others. That's what got this ball rolling! Reddit, both the community and the team behind it, you're amazing. And of course, thanks to the Wikimedians whose patient and inexorable pursuit of the right answer brought them to take world-changing action. Thanks to David S, David K, Cory D, and E Stark for bold action at critical times.

P.P.S. If you haven't already, show this video to as many people as you can. It works! http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/
[/quote]

To be honest, I felt no earthquake from my place... no articles or news in media, nothing...
Only few:
mozilla.org
FoxNews article
wikipedia.org
Edited by vasi 2012-01-20
Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton
Elvish name: Mablung Miriel
Beyound Arduino Lang
 
VK4AYQ
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Joined: 02/12/2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 2539
Posted: 01:13pm 19 Jan 2012
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Hi Vasi it is happening all the time not just in the future.


In fact, this goes on every day. Thats because governments everywhere, in all times and places, want to control information and will use all their power to do it. It is also because the legal framework that rules how information is produced and distributed is fundamentally corrupted by the fraudulent notion of intellectual property, which, if consistently enforced, would put an end to the Internet as we know it...

Just this past week, a judge ruled that a 23-year-old British college student can be extradited to the US for a 10-year prison sentence, all for linking to other servers that illicitly host copyrighted content;

Late last year, US officials shut down 150 domains without hearings or trials on grounds that they were suspected of selling goods that violate trademark law. It was done on Cyber Monday for a reason: It was an announcement to the digital world that government is in charge;

In the spring of last year, the FBI arbitrarily shut down every online poker domain they could find and seized the bank accounts of some of the largest and smartest people who play online poker and all of this happened before the recent announcement that online poker is being re-legalized;

Earlier in the year, the Department of Homeland Security seized 84,000 domains and put up an announcement that each was trafficking in child porn. Problem: It was all a mistake. Not one was actually guilty. To date, there has been no explanation of how this could have happened;

In 2010, the feds seized some 73,000 domains for the crime of linking to content that was said to be distributed illegally in violation of copyright.
Already, the damage of this sort of thing is enormous. Ten years ago, the Internet represented liberation, a new frontier of innovation, commerce, opinion sharing and spontaneous organizing. Today, more and more people are consumed by fear. Bloggers are unclear about what existing law does or does not allow. No one knows for sure how to define fair use. The deepest pockets are winning case after case. Faced with this uncertainty, many are choosing less over more content which is exactly what the government and private monopolists want.

To fight it is like a mouse fighting an elephant with a tooth pick.


BobEdited by VK4AYQ 2012-01-20
Foolin Around
 
vasi

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Joined: 23/03/2007
Location: Romania
Posts: 1697
Posted: 01:53pm 20 Jan 2012
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  VK4AYQ said  ...
To fight it is like a mouse fighting an elephant with a tooth pick.
....
Bob


Yes, and after that, I can run!
Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton
Elvish name: Mablung Miriel
Beyound Arduino Lang
 
Rastus

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Joined: 29/10/2010
Location: Australia
Posts: 301
Posted: 02:34pm 20 Jan 2012
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Hi Vasi,
I've been to seminars about copyright because it impacts heavily on the industry I'm invovled in"music".Now that I've lost everyone,an interesting proposal was suggested,that an annual licence could be issued to individuals at a modest cost($150AU,was the quoted figure)and copyrighted material could be duplicated for the licence period,no limt on material.That was aprox.7 years ago.I'm still waiting!Cheers Rastus
see Rastus graduate advise generously
 
vasi

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Joined: 23/03/2007
Location: Romania
Posts: 1697
Posted: 08:24pm 20 Jan 2012
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Hi guys,

Some good news.
The results of blackout/strike.
Press releases.

And the quote from my email:
[quote]Hi everyone!

A big hurrah to you!!!!! We’ve won for now -- SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today -- the votes we’ve been scrambling to mobilize against have been cancelled.

The largest online protest in history has fundamentally changed the game. You were heard.

On January 18th, 13 million of us took the time to tell Congress to protect free speech rights on the internet. Hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, people all around the world saw what we did on Wednesday. See the amazing numbers here and tell everyone what you did.

This was unprecedented. Your activism may have changed the way people fight for the public interest and basic rights forever.


The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled. “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA Chairman and former Senator Chris Dodd told the New York Times. ‘[PIPA and SOPA were] considered by many to be a slam dunk.’”

“'This is altogether a new effect,' Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing 'an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically' in the last four decades, he added."

Tweet with us, shout on the internet with us, let's celebrate: Round of applause to the 13 million people who stood up - #PIPA and #SOPA are tabled 4 now. #13millionapplause
Share on Twitter Share on FB


We're indebted to everyone who helped in the beginning of this movement -- you, and all the sites that went out on a limb to protest in November -- Boing Boing and Mozilla Foundation (and thank you Tumblr, 4chan)! And the grassroots groups -- Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, CDT, and many more.

#SOPA and #PIPA will likely return in some form. But when they do, we'll be ready. Can you make a donation to Fight for the Future, to help us keep this fire going?

Donate

We changed the game this fall, and we're not gonna stop. $8, $20, every little bit helps.

13 million strong,

Tiffiniy, Holmes, Joshua, Phil, CJ, Donny, Douglas, Nicholas, Dean, David S. and Moore... Fight for the Future!


P.S. China's internet censorship system reminds us why the fight for democratic principles is so important:

In the New Yorker: "Fittingly, perhaps, the discussion has unfolded on Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging site that has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. That is the arrangement that opponents of the bill have suggested would be required of American sites if they are compelled to police their users’ content for copyright violations. On Weibo, joking about SOPA’s similarities to Chinese censorship was sensitive enough that some posts on the subject were almost certainly deleted (though it can be hard to know).
...
After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:

‘We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.’"
[/quote]

Nice quote from Google: "End Piracy, Not Liberty"Edited by vasi 2012-01-22
Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton
Elvish name: Mablung Miriel
Beyound Arduino Lang
 
VK4AYQ
Guru

Joined: 02/12/2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 2539
Posted: 10:44am 21 Jan 2012
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They will find another way

Bob
Foolin Around
 
isaiah

Guru

Joined: 25/12/2009
Location: United States
Posts: 303
Posted: 07:33pm 21 Jan 2012
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Thank You Vasi for posting this.
enjoy it while we can I look for the internet to be shut down or drastically restricted in the not too far distant future.
Take a look at U N agenda 21
Isaiah
URL=http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/1973-11- 01/The-Plowboy-Interview.aspx>The Plowboy Interview[/URL>
 
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