Wikipedia blackout over SOPA and PIPA

[Dave A]

If you're an English speaking web citizen and you'd like to look up something on Wikipedia, right now you're in for a little surprise. Wikipedia is having a 24 hour blackout.

[Mark Atkinson]

Apparently if you disable javascript in your browser it works just fine.

[AndyD]

It's about time people and the big internet players started taking a stand against SOPA. Google is also involved in the protests today.

[twinscythe12332]

I negated the entire effect by stopping my browser just before any pictures loaded. I could still read and get the info I wanted. It was a bit half-baked as a protest.

[Dave A]

It was a bit half-baked as a protest.

Just trying to draw some attention to the issue rather than being anal, I'm sure. And it's certainly an issue worth bringing attention to.

I think the thing that bugs me most is there is a clear intent to enforce USA policy beyond the borders of the USA.
It smacks of dictating terms to the rest of the world - and I suggest the internet doesn't belong to just one country. (Perhaps the netizens of the internet should declare a new country and tell "real world" governments to keep their sticky fingers out of it - or to F*ck Off if you prefer.)

Then there is the "piracy" vs fairly reproduced content problem, which quite simply is far from simple.

Google is effectively copying vast swathes of the web onto their own servers. It needs to to do what it does. But in so doing are they infringing copyright? Is it a form of piracy?

There are various sites (LinkedIn and Afrigator come to mind) that frame content from other sites. What is acceptable and what isn't?
And should it be up to a single government to decide? Especially one that has a long history of pandering to well-heeled vested interest groups.

Stop Google from "indexing" the web.
Stop people from spreading and repeating content on the web.
And we'll be back to where we were 10 to 15 years ago. If we want a piece of information, it's likely to be somewhere on the web - but how the heck are you ever going to trip across it?

[AndyD]

Under the SOPA legislation, as a website owner you would be foul of the law if there are links on your site that point to other sites that index or link to copyright infringing material on yet another site.

This legislation is just recent developements in a war that's been going on for a long time and it'sescalating rapidly. Today Megaupload owners were arrested and the site taken down. Within 12 hours Anonomous the free speech activists retaliated by taking down the sites;

https://www.justice.gov/

https://www.universalmusic.com/

https://www.riaa.com/

https://www.mpaa.org

https://www.copyright.gov/

bmw.com

https://www.universalmusic.com

https://www.hadopi.fr

https://www.utahchiefs.org

bmi.*com
riaa.*org.......to name a few.

Sony's website is planned to have an overhaul on Monday.

This is a subject I have taken sides on a long time ago and I can go on for hours about the issues of the US thinking nothing about pulling sites and even taking out ISP's that it has no legal or geographical jurisdiction over but I won't. I'll keep it focussed appropriately for a South African business forum.


On the surface of this war are issues about the distribution of copyrighted material and laws being pushed through to stop it but you need to see deeper. The US copyright enforcers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and pushing laws through that trample over other peoples legal freedoms and rights even in other countries. This has made it an issue between the man on the street and big business.

Consequently it's business that's going to suffer with the backlash. It's not as difficult a task as you might think to make the web a place that's unsafe enough so people lose confidence and do not want to do business online. Online business is about consumer confidence in the internet as a safe platform, that's the key. Take that away and online business suffers. As this war escalates that's what's going to happen......and in a nutshell that's why this affects you as a business owner in South Africa who utilises the web as a business tool.

[Dave A]

Quite a few different aspects of this can be found in the comments section of the MSN article on the Megaupload owners arrest.

(Gee - I hope there is no pirated content at the end of that link )

From a business point of view, perhaps it's worth mentioning that Megaupload is was a cloud service which was also used by businesses for file storage.
*Poof* All gone.

Coming to a cloud near you soon?

EDIT: It seems the awareness campaign is starting to make a difference.

[tec0]

With the acts we have in South Africa the internet will soon not only remain an expensive commodity but also a very useless one. It is all about books and information and if you cannot access information "especially if you are a student" then it is game over for the internet.

Steam singlehandedly destroyed the gaming industry in South Africa, there massive updates made game buying useless at best. But Steam is now actively destroying the "game-station" industry as these games must now also be connected to the internet at all times.

It is this type of insensitivity that makes me think that simple book stores and fishing is the only real answer. No steam registrations to enjoy something and nature's soundtrack are for the most part free.

If SOPA and PIPA get trough and all the heavy money players are in support of them then I see no use to have the internet around. I never thought I would saw the only free medium in the world would get dismantled by a bunch of rich a$$holes but such is life.

[Justloadit]

I see the justice.gov is up and running again.

[AndyD]

The attacks being used are standard denial of service, it's just a protest, not vindictive action or vandalism so they should all be up and running again very soon. What they plan for the Sony site issomewhat different though, if they pull that off it will be down for awhile I suspect. I'm guessing the Sony threats are smoke and mirrors for another action but we'll see

From a business point of view, perhaps it's worth mentioning that Megaupload is was a cloud service which was also used by businesses for file storage.
*Poof* All gone.

Coming to a cloud near you soon?

Magaupload is or should I say was one of the largest cloud services around and was used extensively for business and non-infringing material. The rights of these people obviously take a back seat to the rights of the MPAA. The domain has been taken, staffersarrested and the equipment confiscated so I don't fancy the chances of anyone getting their ligitimate files back in the forseeable future.

This should make Dropbox users thing long and hard about what they have in the cloud and can they afford to lose the files or have them scrutinised by anyone with money and lawyers who can shout 'copyright infringement'.

[twinscythe12332]

that's another thing against SOPA... ANY cloud services that deal with files of any type will have to scrutinizse every file that goes onto their servers. could SOPA/PIPA end cloud file services?

[Missnancyalex]

I read some where on internet that SOPA problem is solved now but I still wonder that is really stop or not..
If not then we are in Big mess...
we need to shift our servers to china because it is the only way out... and force other big site like wiki and google to shift there server in china to run a business.

[Dave A]

Seeing as China has censorship issues of their own, particularly when it comes to social media, I'm not sure moving onto servers in China is much of a solution

[AndyD]

I read some where on internet that SOPA problem is solved now but I still wonder that is really stop or not..

Yeah, SOPA has been burried at least for now but like I said in a previous post you need to look deeper. SOPA was the knife held in the right hand. Whilst you spent the lest twelve months looking at it and wondering if you're going to get stabbed by it the left hand has been applied firmly and at high speed to your right ear beacuse you were distracted.

It's all about mission creep. and they were never too worried if SOPA was passed because it's took the spotlight off the fact that they've already established sufficient case law to have an ipaddress equal to a person in the eyes of a court. If a copyright infringement takes place from an ipaddress registered to you then you're legally responsible, you go to jail or you pay the rediculously high fine. This would be similar to a company owner being responsible for any criminal offences commited in a company vehicle. One of your employees get drunk on Saturday night, ploughs through a few pedestrians on his way home killing a few and you as the business owner do 15 years in jail because your name is on the vehicle paperwork.

Thinking about it this might not be a bad thing seeing as most vehicles are financed and technically owned by the bank. Hmmmmmm.

Another thing they've achieved whilst you weren't paying attention is they've now wormed it into case law that allows them to equate a download or an upload or part thereof as a lost sale hence the disproportionatly high fines. A single copyright infringement can carry a fine of tens of thousands of dollars.

SOPA, I'm sure they would have loved it as legislation but I doubt they were banking on it. Even as a 'failure' it was worth its weight in gold to them as smoke and mirrors for mission creep over the last year or so. They've got an unlimited supply of money which means they'll get their legislation bit by bit anyway.