US Protect IP and Stop Online Piracy Acts

[formulanone]

It's not really down, at least from my phone's browser. But obviously in protest.

[J N Winkler]

The blackout seems to have been implemented by adding code to each Wikipedia page (possibly a line or two that defines a CSS property that is inherited by all but a few pages) that loads the blackout graphic on top of the article text.  Thus, articles, etc. load as normal and then are blacked out, but can still be read (albeit not easily) by going to the HTML source.

Wikipedia has a page explaining the protest and the current status of SOPA and PIPA.  This is not blacked out, but rather is linked to from within the blackout graphic.  The foreign-language Wikipedias also, by and large, have black-background graphics (positioned above article headers in much the same way as "Personal appeal from founder Jimmy Wales" advertisements) explaining that the English-language Wikipedia is protesting and why.

Edit:  Here is an example on the Spanish Wikipedia:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autov%C3%ADa_del_Pirineo

By the way (albeit on-topic), lengths of the A-21 have opened recently.  In relation to the Corridor H thread, note the use of two tunnels to maintain operating speeds of 100 km/h or better.

[NE2]

The blackout seems to have been implemented by adding code to each Wikipedia page (possibly a line or two that defines a CSS property that is inherited by all but a few pages) that loads the blackout graphic on top of the article text.  Thus, articles, etc. load as normal and then are blacked out, but can still be read (albeit not easily) by going to the HTML source.

Or by disabling JavaScript...

[agentsteel53]

Or by disabling JavaScript...

or hit "esc" (stop page load) between the time that the page and the black cover loads.

[Takumi]

On the mobile version it's just at the top of the page, with the article below it as normal.

[Stephane Dumas]

Some Hollywood moguls are not happy from what I read at
http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/exclusive-hollywood-moguls-stopping-obama-donations-because-of-administrations-piracy-stand/

[Zmapper]

"God knows how much money we've given to Obama and the Democrats and yet they're not supporting our interests."

Just from reading the article, it is obvious that Hollywood expects they can buy the POTUS, screw you American people. How long after the corporate cash flow stops will Obama flip on this issue?

On the bright side, my soon-to-be representative is one of the more active anti-SOPA members.

[corco]

If the Democratic party platform becomes "let's shit on the Constitution"  more than both parties' platforms already are (both parties' platforms are already that way), then you can go ahead and register me as a Republican.

Good for Obama for not sinking to that threat, assuming he doesn't sink to that threat.

[Zmapper]

I wonder if Ron Paul's anti-SOPA post on Facebook will draw him many votes in SC? Judging by likes, that post was liked 38,000 times, much more than the 10,000 or so he gets on other important posts. If he can really hit hard about SOPA the next few days, he might just win it.

Then again, when the debate audience boos the golden rule, it might not affect his final vote tally.

2 minutes until most sites other than Wikipedia come out of the dark ages.

[mightyace]

IMO  The Wikipedia folks are a bunh of a**holes.

I think that organizations like that should be neutral, this is ACTIVISM.

I got along fine before Wikipedia ever existed.  Let them f**k themselves.

EDIT:
This is not that I support the proposed legislation in question but simply stating my opinion that Wikipedia is not the place to voice the protest.  They want their articles to be "Neutral" but they're taking an editorial stance????

If the alarmists like Wikipedia are right then the legislation is a bad idea.  I just haven't looked it up to see how bad it really is.

Am I concerned?  A little, but the world was fine before the internet and it is not necessary to survive.  Helpful, yes.  Necessary, no.

[SSOWorld]

Some Hollywood moguls are not happy from what I read at
http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/exclusive-hollywood-moguls-stopping-obama-donations-because-of-administrations-piracy-stand/

Murdoch is an asshat, pure and simple.  Look at the scandal surrounding him.  He certainly enjoys censorship judging by this.

[hbelkins]

I would really love to find an objective analysis of this legislation. So far everything I've read seems to be overhyped fear. The Internet is not going to die.

When stores get caught selling knockoff designer purses or bootlegged CDs or DVDs, they get shut down. And no one cries "it's the end of the world" when that happens.

[J N Winkler]

I would really love to find an objective analysis of this legislation. So far everything I've read seems to be overhyped fear. The Internet is not going to die.

Thomas.loc.gov would be a good place to start.

I actually agree that much of what is feared is unlikely to come to pass, but I don't think this means that the fears are overhyped.  Every new piece of legislation creates possibilities for legal action which in practice are unlikely to be pursued, but this is no reason not to try to get the legislation right from the get-go.

For example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has an anti-circumvention provision which makes it illegal to use a program like AnyDVD to override the CSS protection on DVDs so the contents can be copied to hard disk (which is useful for time-shifting, e.g. if you have a TV series boxset out from the public library and want to watch episodes outside the loan period).  I believe there is the theoretical possibility of fines or prison for using AnyDVD but I have never known this provision of the law to be enforced in the case of the ordinary home user.  AnyDVD has many US customers and after a major effort (around 2003, IIRC) to step hard on Antigua, where the authors of AnyDVD are based, the US government has more or less stopped trying to enforce this provision of the law.  Part of the problem is that it is only the circumvention itself that is illegal; under copyright law (fair use), you are allowed to make a copy of a DVD you own strictly for your own personal use.  In general, there is no public-interest argument in favor of prosecuting people for taking an illegal path to a legal end when the illegal path leads to no collateral damage to third parties.

In the specific case of SOPA/PIPA, the scope of the remedies they offer encompasses DNS resolution, which is fundamental to how the Internet works, so their effects are likely to be much more far-reaching than the specific problem of Internet piracy that they seek to address.  I don't think they should even be under discussion when copyright is unreformed and more gradual approaches have not even been tried yet.

When stores get caught selling knockoff designer purses or bootlegged CDs or DVDs, they get shut down.  And no one cries "it's the end of the world" when that happens.

This is something that should be tried first.  Part of the problem, from the content providers' point of view, is that a substantial fraction (probably the majority) of the piracy that goes on is not for profit and is really an effort to evade monopolies created by copyright.  The warez release groups that pirate movies and TV series do not do so for profit, and AFAIK do not even have mechanisms for accepting donations from users.  If you acquire pirate AVIs through a torrent, you are not expected to pay anything for them--you are only expected to continue uploading after you have downloaded the finished files ("seeding") so that the torrent remains available to new users and does not die off.  Torrents for popular TV series can remain viable for years after initial broadcast, so the world of torrenting effectively functions as a cheap and convenient TV catch-up service.

At the moment DMCA (the existing enforcement mechanism) requires the content providers to have some "skin" in the business of enforcing copyright--the onus is on them to identify infringing content.  In practice they simply don't bother for many types of content, e.g. TV show episodes which are already broadcast free-to-air, but God help you if you try to pirate, say, a HBO original series like Game of Thrones (for which the only legal forms of access involve premium pricing).  SOPA/PIPA, if passed, would encourage them to try to suppress piracy on everything.  That in turn would give the ordinary user a powerful incentive to subscribe to a proxy or pay VPN service and then start pirating premium content which he or she had previously ignored.  That would in turn lead to the content providers going back to Congress and asking for a ban on proxies and VPN.  Why even start down this road in the first place?

[vdeane]

There's also a couple more points:
1. The content providers have been waging a war on fair use for quite some time now.  They've been trying to get rid of it  for a long time now but know they can't directly attack it because people will see them for the greedy monopolies they are.  So they try to make it impossible for the consumer to exercise fair use rights.  They tried to do this in the courts with VCRs and lost badly; now they know better and create "anti-piracy" legislation to attack anything that threatens their monopoly on content creation.  The leads into the second point...

2. The content creators are unwilling to acknowledge that their business model is obsolete.  In a capitalist society, a company changes to changing conditions, or it dies.  The content creator abhor change and want to live, so they are trying to get laws passed to strangle new media in any way possible.  This is also why bloggers aren't considered journalists today, even though a journalist used to be anyone who had the means to get their work published.  Now you need a special badge.  Why?  Because old media doesn't want to admit obsolescence in the face of new media.

Also, copyright law is a joke.  Ever wonder why it the copyrighted time for works keep getting extended?  It's because Walt Disney doesn't want Micky Mouse to go public domain.

[webfil]

I am definetly a fan of The National Parcs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDl5lXSN2-E