English Wikipedia 24 Hour Blackout!

Hashy's picture

Mornin,

So Wikipedia is blacking out their english database in protest of some new anti piracy laws being introduced in the United States.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-17/wikipedia-plans-24-hour-blac...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Begins in less then 17 hours from now. Just giving you all a heads up in case you don’t know

I don’t know the details of the piracy laws, but it’s probably bad in my opinion….

I’ll give a sh!t about piracy the day I see Michael Bay homeless and begging on the street.

Comments

Microman's picture

Stop Online Privacy Act

If anyone wants to look into it that hasn’t already, it’s called SOPA. It will give the US freedom to seize any domain that even links to copyrighted material, and also add it to a national black list preventing any US citizen from viewing it.

There was a case where a UK student hosted a website linking to TV series downloads. In the UK this is legal. However, USA had him expedited to USA where it was illegal and they could prosecute him. Now, this student had never been to the USA, and did not have his website hosting in the US. This gives you an idea of how serious people will take piracy. Admittedly, this student was making money off his site – around 15,000 pounds a month in advertising revenue. However, this is still not illegal in his country.

If SOPA gets passed, any website hosting copyrighted content, or linking to a website which does, can be seized and removed from the internet. This includes community driven sites like YouTube, Google (or any search engine for that matter), Twitter, Flickr, Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, Wikipedia… It WILL DESTROY THE INTERNET.

Now, an argument I’ve heard is “Why not move the hosting to another country, like Russia where the copyright laws are non-existent and not enforceable by other countries?”. Well, SOPA will also allow the use of a black list. Basically removing USa from the internet. This will remove a very large amount of the content from the internet, and also take a very large user base away.

Hashy's picture

They had a word for it..

Our grandparents had a word for this kind of stuff. A word our generation seems to have no comprehension of, and even worse, does not care about… Its called FASCISM.

Welcome to the 21st Century. Welcome to 1984. We are all now GUILTY by default, and good luck proving your innocence.

Fucking Nazi’s are back.

Get ready for a revolution weather you like it or not.

Sha8doW's picture

didnt i

make a post about SOPA and this the other day…
Glad peoples are listening!

Sha8doW's picture

Much love and respect for Wikipedia

The black out is on…. And it’s just effected me!
Wikipedia actually touches a lot of people on a daily basis, and they probably don’t even know what SOPA is….
So I support the blackout to raise awareness of this issue! Have have heaps off love and respect for wiki in taking a stand and raising mainstream awareness!

Hashy's picture

Sorry Shad

I didn’t recall seeing your post about it before.

I found it interesting that Wikipedia could black out their website for a protest… They don’t have an income based upon page views ( from what I understand). Facebook and Google do.. They say they supported the blackout, but I didn’t see them demonstrate that position… That’s the greed; What Facebook and Google make within 24 hours just can’t be passed up by most people.

I mean, ok, so theres the “struggling” young musician.. They make very little in sales from their music, the rest gets pirated… That does kind of suck, its not like say Snoop Dogg for instance. His hip pocket wouldn’t notice the cut that’s supposedly taken from people downloading his songs. At least the struggling young musicians stuff is still being heard… If people like it, they should buy it.. How would I know if I like that musicians stuff without buying it? I’ve gotta be more careful with money then most ( after all, in many peoples opinions, its THEIR monies and not mine!), I could never afford to even buy a suite of individual songs to try before I find something I like to settle upon… Hurrah for You Tube in that respect.

While I do think the struggling young musician needs a fairer go, on the other side of things, people are making TOO MUCH MONEY… And if you are, you are probably exploiting people in some fashion in order to do it… The rate in which the fat cat on wall street gets paid for sitting on his arse all day moving about zero’s and one’s, compared to what the Mexican immigrant gets for picking beans all day; the difference is MASSIVE, yet one person has put in a hard days work and effort that actually contributes to society; the other has simply manipulated a bit of information and actually contributed little towards the ACTUAL progress of society. The system aint fair, it aint balanced, and in nature, imbalances are corrected, and in society, those balances are beginning to try to correct themselves as well…

several games are also in favour

mine craft is shutting down its website for a day against sopa as well and leauge of legends is promoting against it

kippa

Hashy's picture

Great!

That’s great to hear Kippa!

I reckon teamipx.net should be doing the same… While we do not support piracy, we do support a free and open internet.

Sha8doW's picture

I think people arent properly understanding WHY

This actually isn’t about piracy. Piracy is illegal… While people my be able to justify it to themselves in there own way, like a person wearing black as some kind of stance against something, ultimately piracy is illegal. Agree or Disagree!
“we (IPX) don’t support illegal activities”, but we aren’t about to go Nanny State.

What this blackout is actually about is, in the “front” attempt to stop online piracy, the shitty drafted piece of legislation gives corporations too much power!
For example, say on our site one of you added a URL or somthing which links to content which may be legal in Aus/NZ but illegal under SOPA and in the US. Now say that link is on our site, Fuzz, Robag, Blood, n0mad and myself as the owners of the site, who are busy in our own lives miss the link in some backwater forum page. Let’s make it worse and think that we have millions of hits every day (nomads L4D post is getting there ;) ) and our shitty little google Adsense was making us REAL money….
Now while the 5 of us actually have done nothing wrong, the content is not on our site, nor is the content or our site hosted in the US, SOPA, in its extreme can shut our website down!
Worse still as we are making money, as we are an attractive target (due to the hypothetical millions we are making as stated above) and seen to be profiteering from piracy, the 5 of us can get extradited to the US and had legal action taken against us
Now I don’t want to share a cell with Fuzz… Or Robag and his Crazy Eyes!

Now that is why SOPA is bad, that is why blackouts partitions etc etc ad occurring!
Cause it give innoporopriate powers innopropritly and disproportionally!

n0mad's picture

Agree

I agree t0 your every w0rd Shad

Als0 I did C y0ur 0rig0nal Bl0g Shad and I c0mmented

n0mad

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