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Displaying items by tag: SOPA

Thursday, 19 January 2012 06:52

And We’re Back!

censorship-InternetSo Yesterday, January 18th 2012, was the great Internet Blackout in protest of SOPA. We contributed with a black out of the site for 24 hours.  Many sites supported this on the surface but when it came time to draw the curtains on their pages they just could not do it. The reasons for this are pretty plain to see. Since most sites run off of advertising (which is ALL based on the amount of traffic you get) they did not want to take the hit in revenue.

Published in News

animal_farm-pigsOver the course of the next few weeks you will read dozens of articles on the web and in print talking about the top technology and how this or that product shaped the market. However, no matter how impressive the technology was there was one thing that shaped the world of consumer electronics more than anything else. The lawsuit; it is a simple and unfortunate fact that patent and copyright lawsuits had a bigger impact on the consumer electronic market than any 5 products put together.

Published in Editorials
Friday, 23 December 2011 22:44

The Anti-SOPA movement just keeps on growing

un-censorship-InternetDespite being delayed until sometime next year the vote on SOPA is still fresh in many people’s minds. Just recently GoDaddy came under fire for their support of the bill. One of their primary accounts (Cheezburger, the group behind I Can Haz Cheezburger) has threatened to pull its 1000+ domains if GoDaddy does not stop its support of the SOPA Bill.GoDaddy has now officially pulled their support (go figure) for SOPA.

Published in Editorials
Monday, 05 December 2011 19:57

Kaspersky Leaves the BSA over SOPA

censorship-InternetWith SOPA still a hot topic we are hearing about more fallout as lines are being drawn even between one time partners. We have heard that several members of the Business Software Alliance have asked the organization to pull all support from the dangerous and potentially damaging bill. The BSA has complied (for the most part) but has still left enough of an opening that not everyone is satisfied with the way things stand.

Published in News

broken-lockRecent events in Washington have caused quite a stir on the internet as a very oppressive bill is working its way through the legislative branch of the US government. We have talked about this bill and its dangerous consequences more than once but with the release of some new information and after a few questions that we were recently asked we are going to approach it again. First let’s give you a little background as we show you how the US will be if the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is passed.

Published in Editorials
Tuesday, 15 November 2011 20:31

American Censorship Day is Tomorrow

censorship-InternetTomorrow is the American Censorship Day. This is a time when many websites (DecryptedTech included) will replace their front pages with a simulated takedown notice. However, the code will also allow you to send an email to your representatives in congress as well as find more information on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and just how dangerous it really is. We have already told you how serious this act can potentially be and now it seems that the many web businesses are waking up to the potential of this act.

Published in News
Friday, 11 November 2011 19:46

New SOPA act could by-pass Net Neutrality Laws

73There are times when I read about something on the Internet and I have to stop and wonder if the site reporting on the item has gotten something wrong. As an example I recently read about a new act called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). According to the article on TorrentFreak.com this new act will allow corporations the ability to shut down websites by submitting a complaint to the sites host. Now I thought that this sounded unlikely so I looked into the act and found out that it is even more disturbing that what TorrentFreak posted.

It turns out that the bill is a revision of one what was first presented in the Senate call the “Protect IP Act”. This revision was supposed to correct issues with that first bill and instead has only succeeded in extending them and making them more vague. For example in the bill it uses the verbiage that includes any site or “portion of” a site that is "dedicated to theft of U.S. property," this is a very broad category that has no clear definition. For example if someone posts a YouTube video with copyrighted music in the background, is that theft? What about a cover of a song where the music and lyrics were legally purchased?  These two “violations” could get the offending website cut off from payment provides (PayPal), advertisers (advertisers Google Adsense etc.), and get the site completely shut down.

To make matters worse the shutdown order would not go to the site owner, but directly to the Payment providers, advertisers, and ISPs for the host of the site (or if the owners host it themselves their ISP). The The ISPs, advertisers and payment providers must comply to the complaint or they face fines. The site owner does not get notification from the complaint, they just get shut down. To add insult to injury the site owner has limited rights to appeal the complaint before or after they have the rug pulled out from under them.  

This new legislation is an abomination and nothing more than an attempt to grant corporations (not just the media) license to shut down any site that offends them. To give you an example of what can happen if this bill is allowed to go through, let’s say that a site writes up an article criticizing a company for a product and uses images of the packaging or quotes from their website in the review. Under this new act that company who holds copyright over the logo’s and the wording on the website could send a complaint to the site’s host, advertisers and payment providers and get them locked out.  This type of heavy handed control over the internet is simply terrifying.

To combat this most of the consumer advocacy groups have challenged the bill and congress men and women from both sides of the fence have spoken out about this. There is also an American Censorship Day planned. The Fight For the Future Organization is asking web sites to post a snipet of code to their websites on November 16th the code will pop-up with a fake seizure notice that will explain the new bill and how each user can act to contact their congress person to try and get this bill stopped now.



We will be participating in this and urge all of you to help out with this as this act is about more than copyrighted content. It is about control of the content on the internet.

Source TorrentFreak

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