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CISPA is a comprehensive con job designed to pull the veil over the eyes of the world

Technology / April 21 by JD Rucker

There’s a scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves’ character, Neo, gets the tar beaten out of him by Agent Smith. After an extremely intense fight that has him narrowly avoiding death by jumping out of the way of an oncoming train, he is tired and staggering away. The train stops and a refreshed Agent Smith steps off, ready to fight again. This is much like the fight that the people of the internet are faced with right now. Fighting SOPA in January, 2012, took a monumental effort that called in the combined efforts of juggernaut websites like Wikipedia and Reddit to defeat. It was a long, sustained battle…

SOPA and PIPA: Everything you need to know

Lifestyle / January 18 by Sal McCloskey

Today is SOPA Blackout Day to oppose the bills currently being proposed in Congress, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect-IP Act (PIPA). You may have noticed that there are several major websites that are down today, including Wikipedia, Reddit, and Mozilla. You may have noticed that you Google has a message on their homepage encouraging people to contact Congress. What exactly is SOPA and PIPA? In essence, these are attempts by the US government being fueled by the entertainment industry to fight online piracy. They are being positioned and publicized as anti-piracy acts by government…

The SOPA blackout is the most American thing we've done all day

Lifestyle / January 17 by JD Rucker

The Tea Party movement was intended for Americans to harken to the revolutions of the past when tyranny and taxation reigned over the colonies. The #OccupyWallStreet movement drew awareness to the tremendous gaps between the “haves” and the “have nots” with a call for a more sensible distribution of wealth. Both have supporters and detractors of equal passions. Neither was as purely American as what the SOPA/PIPA/OPEN blackouts planned for tomorrow represent. There is distinct gray surrounding the Tea Party and #OWS. Both galvanized parts of the population but the political questions being…

Website owners, here's how to protest SOPA on January 18th

Lifestyle / January 14 by Sal McCloskey

Social news aggregator Reddit.com took the lead and announced that they were “going black” on January 18th to protest SOPA and PIPA. Despite backpedaling in Congress, the need is greater than ever for people to learn what the bills will mean if passed. Other websites need to follow Reddit’s lead. Several have, including Cheezburger, GOOD, and MoveOn, but it’s not enough. If you’re a website owner, Sara Jo Chipps has an easy way for you to participate. Drop the following code in between your two <HEAD></HEAD> tags on your site, your users will be redirected to the blackout page that…

The major video game companies may be off the SOPA list but they still support it

Gaming / January 1 by JD Rucker

It’s one thing to distance your company from a list that had proven in the last couple of weeks to be detrimental to those on it. It’s another thing altogether to come out and oppose something because it’s fundamentally wrong even if doing so has a negative effect on your bottom line. Most of the big gaming companies who had their name removed from the SOPA support list have done little more than just that – had their names removed. Microsoft is the only major player in the industry that has voiced any opposition to the bill, saying in November that it needed major changes for them to support it. As Rawstory…

GoDaddy lost 72,354 domains this week. It's not enough.

Offbeat / December 24 by JD Rucker

Despite a massive Twitter campaign and a blog post that claims “Go Daddy no longer supports SOPA legislation” the company and their CEO have dodged questions about opposing the bill. In essence, they are taking a lesser role by not showing support for the bill. They have not opposed it. This week, they lost around 72,000 domain registrations. At a yearly discounted rate of $6.99 (most registrations are higher), that’s over half a million dollars per year. It is apparently not enough for them to speak out against the bill. Everyone from large corporations like Google down to small startups like…

SOPA vote delayed

Offbeat / December 16 by Connor Livingston

The House Judiciary Committee has ceased without a vote to try to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) out of committee today. At the heart of the delay is the controversial provision that would give the Attorney General the power to shut down websites for copyright infringement. Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said the hearing would resume at the “earliest practical day that Congress is in session.” That could be weeks. IT experts have warned that DNS tampering would create security risks for both website owners, ISPs, and the government itself. Yesterday, Representative Jason Chaffetz…

Visualizing SOPA, the internet blacklist bill

Lifestyle / November 24 by JD Rucker

After last week’s high-energy American Censorship Day flew through with amazing responses from websites everywhere, much of the buzz has faded in the last few days. That simply cannot happen. SOPA, the bill that would grant power to the US government to censor websites, punish users, and have unprecedented control over the internet in general, is up for a vote next month. Despite all of the feverish activity, now is not the time to slow down. This is a sprint – the vote is next month – and the money (via campaign contributions) behind those supporting the bill is growing. Congress must be contacted….

Posts Tagged ‘SOPA’