Outside of elections, I generally stay out of politics, on the (admittedly dubious) theory that constructing an informed opinion and bringing about appropriate social change would take too much time away from things I care about more, like science and free software. But this is one case where political developments threaten both of these things. SOPA and PIPA would permit, under certain circumstances (which one would be very optimistic to expect will include only circumstances one agrees with), the courts to order that payment providers not deal with a site, search engines not list a site, and name servers not keep records for a site. That's like preventing a supermarket from selling bagels to criminals, or preventing anybody from mentioning the name of a criminal that Big Brother wishes never existed. There are even rules in these bills against providing means around DNS censorship: as every SSH client in the world implements proxys, every SSH client could be construed as illegal software.
Human knowledge depends on keeping the Internet open. We can't let this happen. Call your congresscritters today! Or tomorrow, if you prefer, while there will be plenty of reminders throughout the Web. :)
EFF page:
https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill
Reddit FAQ:
http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/sopa
See in particular these hints for calling Congressional offices:
http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nl1qr/please_listen_to_b/c3a1rlr
SOPA (the House bill—currently shelved, but watch out for a quiet sequel) on OpenCongress:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/text
SOPA on THOMAS:
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc112/h3261_ih.xml
PIPA (the Senate bill) on OpenCongress:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/text
PIPA on THOMAS:
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc112/s968_rs.xml
And here's a petition to sign:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/putting_sopa_on_a_shelf034765.php
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http://lostfacts.net/boards
I'm strangely comfortable with it.
The halt of SOPA as well as the White House's comments are excellent news, but I wouldn't take victory for granted quite yet.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Well, that didn't take long:
http://judiciary.house.gov/news/01172012.html
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
I sent my representative and two senators a message. Unfortunately, one is a co-sponsor of PIPA. Hopefully enough come out against it that he relents.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
Both of New York's senators are co-sponsers. :/
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Both of New York's senators are kind of reprehensible jerks.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
My dad, who worked at the school Chuck Schumer's daughter attended, tells a funny story about Schumer storming into the upper-school office and insisting that the reason his daughter was getting uniformly bad grades was that all of her teachers were incompetent.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Somewhat related. Quite a few file locker services are pre-emptively bailing after MegaUpload got shredded.
http://torrentfreak.com/cyberlocker-ecosystem-shocked-as-big-players-take-drastic-action-120123/
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http://lostfacts.net/boards
Swordians rule.
Brace yourselves. Ragnarok is coming.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."