Fact: Michael Bay initially planned to direct ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ in accordance with the Dogme 95 manifesto.posted by titus-g at 1:33 AM on January 18, 2012 [9 favorites]
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.-- Thomas Jefferson
It’s behavior like Chris Dodd’s that makes it rational not only to be cynical about our political culture, but outright jaded. What makes Dodd’s shilling for this censorship law so galling is that, during the 2008 presidential campaign, he postured as the candidate who would devote himself first and foremost to defending core Constitutional freedoms and civil liberties. ...posted by Trurl at 5:39 AM on January 18, 2012 [4 favorites]
Furthermore, one of the bill’s chief Senate sponsors is a liberal Democrat from Vermont, Pat Leahy, who during the Bush years flamboyantly depicted himself as a stalwart defender of Constitutional liberties — and whose “top 3 campaign contribution sources [are] lawyers, entertainment industry, lobbyists.” Those industries are, of course, also major donors to Leahy’s House GOP counterpart. ...
In the face of pervasive, sleazy conduct like this, it’s not only tempting to be jaded about partisan activism: it’s rational. Watching Chris Dodd and Pat Leahy join equally compromised Republicans in crusading for an Internet censorship bill — not even out of sincerely held authoritarian impulses but just base, corrupted subservience to industry — reveals most of what one needs to know about how the political class functions and who owns and controls it.*
"That's what the almost-21,000-strong group NY Tech Meetup fears could happen if so-called SOPA and PIPA legislation gets passed. The group is holding an emergency protest outside of the offices of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who co-sponsored the Senate bill, at 780 Third Ave. from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday in a bid to defeat the legislation."Also his Twitter is getting mighty defensive about this:
[S]ocial media sites like Facebook or YouTube -— basically any site with user generated content —- would have to police their own sites, forcing huge liability costs onto countless Internet companies.The "'have said en masse" link leads to a turgidly written 28-page PDF at Booz & Co.; however, here are relevant excerpts from the Executive Summary:
This is exactly why venture capitalists have said en masse they won’t invest in online startups if PIPA and SOPA pass.
It is estimated that the Internet has represented 3.4 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and 21 percent of GDP growth in mature countries over the past five years.posted by Herodios at 8:08 AM on January 18, 2012 [6 favorites]
[F]urther investment will be needed to support the creation of new technologies in social media, mobility, cloud computing, and the streaming of video and audio content.
The companies at the heart of these innovations depend heavily on investment from angel investors and venture capitalists [who] invest an estimated US$20 billion and $23 billion, respectively, into early-stage companies in the U.S. annually. . .
[W]e surveyed 189 U.S. accredited angel investors and interviewed 24 prominent venture capitalists.
[O]ur principal findings:
- Increasing liability for content providers would have a greater negative impact on early-stage investment than would a weak economy and an increased competitive environment combined.
- Holding DCIs liable for the content uploaded by users would. . . reduce the pool of interested angel investors by 81 percent.
- Regulations making users more easily prosecuted for copyright violations would . . . reduce the pool of interested angel investors by 48 percent.
- A large majority of angels and venture capitalists support increased clarity in copyright law, especially if it would decrease the level of ambiguity surrounding the probability of facing a lawsuit in cases of copyright infringement, as well as the size of damages in the event of liability.
- Fully 80 percent report being uncomfortable investing in business models in which the regulatory framework is ambiguous.
Tense scenes here outside the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, after goateed hipsters and schoolchildren clashed early this morning over access to the library's limited number of copies of the concise edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.posted by nangar at 8:49 AM on January 18, 2012 [6 favorites]
....
NYPD officers are attempting to restore calm by randomly arresting uninvolved onlookers.
I am once again delighted that my representative is on the right side of things, and I refuse to take responsibility for the rest of the jackasses Texas has elected. (That's the only way to maintain sanity, living here.)Ron Paul's against SOPA! Of course, he would have been against the early funding that helped creating the internet as well....
Doesn't seem to offer much hope for getting more moderate GOP Senators if he's going to lose after one term.It's hard to imagine that a "Moderate GOP Senator", one who's used his position as a swing vote to win concessions for major banks would be more valuable then having Elizabeth Warren in the senate.
But it would be better to have a GOP Senator like him than Jim DeMint. Scott Brown in, say North Carolina would be a lot better than Scott Brown in MA.Right, but that has to do with the character of the voters in those states. Republican primary voters in MA want to vote for moderates because they might win. Republican primary voters in NC don't, because they don't need to worry about it.
it is that if Brown, who is a moderate Republican by today's standards, can not win reelection that implies that only radical Republicans stand a chance of being elected d still rather have him in the Senate than say Cornyn, or Corker, or DeMint or Enzi or...Right but again, that's what happens when the voters in those states vote. Scott Brown's election was the result of a particularly awful democratic candidate, someone even I would have had trouble voting for. Martha Coakley was just awful. Had I been in MA there's a chance I would have voted for Brown. But obviously I'd be jumping at the chance to vote for Warren.
the man of twists and turns: "I'm going to vote against Sen. Marco Rubio for entirely different reasons, but I guess I won't call him tomorrow."No, please, do still call him. It's still worth it—after all, now is when people get to start calling him a flip-flopper and commie pirate-sympathizer.
jessamyn: Amusingly one of the reasons there are so few libraries participating is that for organizations with 501c3 status, coming out against legislation can be considered forbidden political activity, especially if there is someone with an axe to grind against your organization.I took a spin around some university sites--places like Carnegie Mellon and Michigan, which are known as major tech schools and sites of development of the internet and the Internet2 initiative--and was pretty disappointed, especially in so-called "Information Schools" like the University of Pittsburgh's, where I hope to start the MLS program soonish. So I was quite pleased to see this page from the Syracuse iSchool ...
I am telling myself that this is why the ALA has done basically nothing."
A Declaration of the Independence of CyberspaceAnd, OK, it is slightly tweer than a kitten in mittens singing "I Will Survive", but...
by John Perry Barlow
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996
No senators were found for your zip code.Oh, the irony.
Democracie (or democracy) is a poleetical form o government in which governin pouer is derived frae the fowk, either bi direct referendum (direct democracie) or bi means o electit representatives o the fowk (representative democracie). [..]posted by desjardins at 11:26 AM on January 18, 2012 [2 favorites]
In the Unitit States, separation o pouers is aften cited as a supportin attribute, but in ither kintras, such as the Unitit Kinrick, the dominant philosophie is parliamentarie sovereigntie (though in practice judicial independence is generallie maintained). In ither cases, "democracie" is uised tae mean direct democracie. Though the term "democracie" is typicallie uised in the context o a poleetical state, the principles are applicable tae private organizations an ither groups an aa.
I'm tired of having to stringently enforce antipiracy policies in an effort to respect the rights of content creators. I'm tired of our community being a beacon of somewhat decency in a sea of whiny brats who just want everything for free.posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:13 PM on January 18, 2012 [7 favorites]
So you know what, Maidens of the Kaleidoscope will hereby endorse the current efforts in Congress to eliminate all those nasty loopholes criminals exploit like "fair use" and "safe harbor" and that sort of nonsense. Clearly every single piece of work, every single note, line, still, video or object created by the wonderful people representing the RIAA and MPAA and Max Hardcore Productions deserve every penny from their work now until the next millenium so their children and their children's children and children's children's children can live safe and happily. And only freedom hating communists want to take food off Dr. Dre's table right?
Plus, everyone knows anime and visual culture fans are just all dirty pirates anyways, stealing viewership from hardworking American actors and shows and media. I mean we all clearly know if such evil sites like nicovideo.jp (communists) and danbooru.donmai.us (how cute they put .us in their name to try to hide their communist ways) didn't exist, they instead would be purchasing the latest Eminem/Fabio duet single and watching Real Housewives of Milwaukee and reading Captain George W America and the League of Capitalists.
So if you're a freedom loving American, you already know the answer, you need to tell your Senator and your Representative right now to pass this bill ASAP to protect America from foreign influence corrupting our pure American ways, and to protect American jobs from being taken by electronica nerds in their basements making chiptunes with old PC98s. If you're a communist, well, God help you because you'll be in jail with the rest of the Billy Idol impersonators.
I know, you want me to write my congressperson. This is my congressperson. Do you still want me to write her about this?Yes, write in to thank her, and consider donating to her! We should reward good behavior when it happens! (looks like you did that. Awesome)
Dear Ms. West:I am curious about that last paragraph because that was not, at all, my impression.
Thank you for contacting me about the PROTECT IP Act. I appreciate hearing from you.
In drafting this legislation, I have been committed an open process and have heard from all third parties that would be asked to take action under the bill. It is because of this process that a majority of third parties support these actions. However, an open process has also allowed me to hear a number of concerns from engineers, human rights groups, and Vermonters. Because of these concerns, I am prepared to hold back and study the Domain Name provision of the bill as the Senate moves forward to consider it on January 24, even as I remain confident that Internet Service Providers would not support this measure if it created the problems that some have suggested.
It is important to note that mainstream websites such as Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, and others are in no way targeted by this bill. Most importantly, this is because they are based in the United States and the PROTECT IP Act targets primarily foreign websites. This is also due to the fact that in order to meet the definition contained in the PROTECT IP Act, websites must have no significant use other than infringement. There is no doubt that each of these sites do have significant uses other than infringement, even as some of them contain infringing content, and would therefore never satisfy that requirement.
Thank you again for contacting me. Please keep in touch.
Sincerely,
PATRICK LEAHY
United States Senator
To be perfectly clear, the sites that the bill is meant to be targeted at are sites like filestube.com (oh how i love it so), megaupload, and the Pirate Bay, and probably private trackers and a lot of blogs and messageboards that primarily link to files hosted on those sites.The difference is between who the bill "targets" and who it "effects"
As you may know, several popular websites, including Wikipedia, have gone black today to protest SOPA, a bill with sweeping language that could lead to censorship on the Internet. Hundreds of constituents have contacted me by phone, email, Facebook and Twitter over the past few days to voice their opposition to the legislation.GO, CHELLIE!
I wanted to let you know that I am strongly opposed to SOPA and will vote against this legislation if it comes before the House. The companion bill could come before the Senate as early as next week.
SOPA sounds like it has a noble purpose—stopping online piracy—but its sweeping language could have a chilling effect on free speech online. It gives big corporations far too much power in censoring what can be shared online, and the penalties it sets go way overboard. You could face up to five years in prison just for posting a video of your child singing a pop song. That’s not what the Internet is all about. You can find out more about the legislation here.
To share your feedback on this legislation, please contact me or comment on Facebook.
Best wishes,
(signature)
Well, it's heartening to see some of the various scumbags members of Congress come around on SOPA/PIPA ... even if in most cases it's with about the same level of sincerity that my cat displays when he's caught sitting on the kitchen counter. It's a great act, but we both know the next time I'm not looking he's going to be right back up there.Well, the thing is though that a lot of the opponents to SOPA are also corporations, Google, Facebook, Reddit. Wikipedia and Mozilla, as non profits are a type of 'corporation', just typically without the money. Unfortunately, that's what makes this fight winnable, there is big money on both sides of the issue.
And that's my concern. Not to diminish the efforts of today's blackouts, or everyone who has called or written to oppose SOPA/PIPA, but there's a huge risk -- I'd say its a near-certainty -- that the companies underwriting SOPA/PIPA are just going to keep trying, over and over and over, until something slips through and becomes law. That's essentially what they did with the DMCA, and it passed on a voice vote so that nobody would be able to point fingers, exactly, afterwards.
Why is the RIAA and MPAA being given such a huge voice in the government? (Well: lobbyists obviously.) What is it going to take for the goverment to finally wake up and say "Ok you guys at the **AA have been getting away with your crap for over 20 years now. Enough is enough."I doubt the average artist out there is a big fan of SOPA/PIPA. It's the people who run the companies, who want more control over the internet.
I honestly can't believe the content industry is populated by such a ridiculous bunch of cavemen. Honestly.
Congressional negotiators are looking at radical revisions to the DNS provisions, but lawmakers may decide the resulting legislation is too neutered to pursue, aides from both parties say.
I'm a bit ambivalent about all this stuff with SOPA and PIPA because it's a little disheartening that what really gets people riled up is when you fuck with their internet, and not things like torture and assassination and vast media disinformation campaigns. But, on the other hand, these two laws are shit like the DMCA is shit and all are representative of numerous things that are wrong the US legislative process and voter awareness. Stopping these two laws is a good thing on its own terms.Part of the problem is that people just don't want to believe all that horrible stuff, so they tune it out, and the media doesn't cover it.
I started talking about PROTECT IP last May, back when the Kos left was all in favor of Internet regulation.He's talking about Net Neutrality, which is a really incomprehensible thing for anyone other then phone companies to be against. A lot of people, who knows why, seemed to think Net Neutrality meant enforcing political neutrality on websites, or something. It probably needs to be rebranded.
The attendees included veteran Washington policymakers and cyberdefense experts. But one person – an engineer named Dan Kaminsky who specializes in an arcane set of rules governing how people connect to the Internet – stood outposted by empath at 7:54 AM on January 19, 2012 [2 favorites]
That would be mefi's own Dan Kaminsky.
These engineers, of whom Kaminsky is among the most vocal, succeeded in making the case that the bills would adversely affect the technology intended to secure the Web against hacking attacks that hijack websites and trick people into visiting pages loaded with malicious software....posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2012 [5 favorites]
One of the main problems engineers cited was that [the DNS blocking required by SOPA] is the same blocking mechanism hackers use to fool people into going to fake websites. The security system they had devised wouldn’t be able to distinguish between blocking done by hackers and that done by governments and therefore wouldn’t work. That could leave Web users open to hacking, they said.
So, essentially, what they're saying is, "Hey, Obama, if you pass this bill, we will give you a bunch of money; if you don't, we won't."In American politics? Hahahaha.
Isn't there a word for that?
Isn't it illegal?
Sys Rq: "Hollywood moguls tell Obama to go fuck himself.Salon: Dodd accused of “bribery” over SOPA remarks
So, essentially, what they're saying is, "Hey, Obama, if you pass this bill, we will give you a bunch of money; if you don't, we won't."
Isn't there a word for that?
Isn't it illegal?"
In response to his comments, a petition has been created on the White House website asking the Obama administration to investigate Dodd for “bribery.” It hasposted by FlyingMonkey at 2:50 PM on January 23, 201217,00022,000 signatures after two days.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:09 PM on January 17, 2012 [37 favorites]