Tomorrow, starting at 8 am eastern time, Speak Without Interruption will show it’s support for the Stop SOPA Internet Blackout, January 18th from 8am to 8pm.
SWI, along with thousands of other sites all across the Internet, will redirect it’s users to a special Stop SOPA page.
The idea of an Internet Blackout idea began with the site REDDIT, which many Internet users call the Front-page of the Internet. They have pledged to blackout their site completely for 12 hours starting tomorrow at 8am. They are joined by Google, Wikipedia and thousands of others who will either black out completely or re-direct to announcement pages asking others to join them. This will be our method of supporting this noble cause.
SWI, as a firm defender of free speech, is joining the ranks of this movement. Our contribution may be small, but we will stand against this heinous piece of legislation, as well as the House of representatives’ version the “PIPA bill,” with all the other concerned Internet providers and users. It’s not that we stand for copyright infringement, we stand against the provisions of the bill that allow sites to be shut down without any proof of wrong doing, simply on the suspicions of content owners like Disney, Warner Bros, and the RIAA.
These bills are designed to allow the US government and large content owners to “filter out” any site they suspect of copyright infringement. This would mean that for most US Internet users these sites would no longer exist. Their ad content would disappear as well as their users. This is giving our government and law enforcement agencies the power to effectively censor the Internet and the world beyond our borders. Filtered sites would not reappear until they had proven their innocence in a US court of law. Quite a different situation than “Innocent until proven Guilty.”
Sites could be removed for a single page or image of suspect content. Sites could be removed for any reason and still have to fight it out in court to ever be seen again.
The wording in these bills is so loose that any site could be removed under any suspicion, including association or link with a suspected site.
The worst part is that these bills will not stop copyright infringement. The writers of these bills don’t seem to realize that more expert users could easily connect to the filtered sites, working around the filters, by simply connecting to the site through a proxy in another country.
Here is an independent security report on the implications and effectiveness of PIPA and SOPA
Here is an accounting and report of the major contributors to the lobbying for the bills
We hope that our contributors and readers will join SWI in our support against these badly constructed and dangerous pieces of legislation.
We value your opinion, please feel free to comment.
Prentiss Gray
Prentiss Gray is a writer/columnist/blogger from New Jersey. After 27 years as a Information Systems consultant and the death of his wife of 21 years, he returned to his roots as a writer, creating the national column Adventures of the Lone Dad/ Daddy chronicles. He now Blogs for Gannet on domestic technology, and writes feature pieces and stories for general publication. He is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and contributes to Bloomberg News, Daily Record, Gannett and the Tribune Syndicate.
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It’s important to note that both PIPA and SOPA, have been crafted by overzealous defenders of copyright who have sacrificed rights of free speech in the belief that “right will prevail.” I think most of us know that any legislation can, and will be used by private enterprise to their benefit over any supposed rights of anyone else. That’s their job, that’s what they will do. No shame in that, just reality.
Thank you, Bob and Prentiss. Yes, don’t we know it.
Hey Bob and Prentiss,
I do understand one point of defending copyrights from conducting much research on the ‘net: many times I’ll Google a subject and find that the same article is reprinted on four or five sites without attribution. Word-for-word with barely a title change. It it was my article I’d be beyond steamed. But something tells me the creators of these bills aren’t worried about someone plagiarizing my sex/ghosts/waking up in the gutter stories. As usual, it’s to defend the interests of corporations (“Corporatism is fascism.” –Benito Mussolini).
That being said, I admire that you’ve added your “shields to the wall”; free speech must be defended at all costs–far more important than potential copyright infringement.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the reality that the Patriot Act allows the government to monitor who takes what books from libraries.
Copyrights are important. Original content is just that. But we must use care when deciding what is legitimate to copyright. Free speech cannot be infringed. And I too am still trying to wrap my mind around the Patriot Act as well as discussions relative to due process. The military should not be able to arrest citizens without hearing…indefinitely. We ust all protect our freedoms, SPEECH being one of them…
Good looking out…
Fixed the “Stop SOPA” plugin to be a little less like an attack dog and let people through once they’d seen the message. I’m glad you guys approve, I was sure you would. When is the Patriot act going to go away anyway?