Wikipedia Blackouts Against PIPA and SOPA

Q&A from wikipedia.

What exactly is Wikipedia doing?

On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia community is protesting SOPA and PIPA with a global blackout of the English Wikipedia. Readers who come to English Wikipedia from the United States will see a message from Wikipedia about SOPA and PIPA that encourages them to contact their representatives or senators, and readers everywhere will be encouraged to share their views via social media. This protest will last 24 hours – from midnight to midnight EST.

Why is this happening?

The English Wikipedia community is opposed to SOPA/PIPA. In an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and inhibit people’s access to information online.

Why? SOPA and PIPA put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn’t being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won’t show up in major search engines. SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.

For over a decade, Wikipedians have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. This proposed legislation could seriously damage Wikipedia, and your ability to access information online.

Isn’t SOPA dead? Wasn’t the bill shelved, and didn’t the White House declare that it won’t sign anything that resembles the current bill?

No, SOPA and PIPA are not dead. On January 17th, SOPA’s sponsor said the bill will be discussed in early February. There are signs PIPA may be debated on the Senate floor next week. The threat of SOPA and PIPA remains, and the English Wikipedia community wants to send a strong message that such attacks on the free and open web are not welcome.

Aren’t SOPA/PIPA as they stand not even really a threat to Wikipedia? Won’t the DNS provisions be removed?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great post about this here. SOPA and PIPA are still alive, and they’re still a threat to the free and open web, which means they are a threat to Wikipedia. For example, in its current form, SOPA would require U.S. sites to take on the heavy burden of actively policing third-party links for infringing content. And even with the DNS provisions removed, the bill would give the U.S. government extraordinary and loosely-defined powers to take control over content and information on the free web. Taking one bad provision out doesn’t make the bills okay, and regardless, Internet experts agree they won’t even be effective in their main goal: halting copyright infringement.

What can users outside of the U.S. do to support this effort?

Users outside of the U.S. can contact their local State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or similar branch of government. Tell them that you oppose the draft US SOPA and PIPA legislation, and all similar legislation. SOPA and PIPA will have a global effect – websites outside of the U.S. would be impacted by legislation that hurts the free and open web. And, other jurisdictions are grappling with similar issues, and may choose paths similar to SOPA and PIPA.

Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. Because the protest message is powered by JavaScript, it’s also possible to view Wikipedia by completely disabling JavaScript in your browser.

I keep hearing that this is a fight between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Is that true?

No. Some people are characterizing it that way, probably in an effort to imply all the participants are motivated by commercial self-interest. But you can know it’s not that simple, because Wikipedia has no financial self-interest here: we are not trying to monetize your eyeballs or sell your products. We are protesting to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA solely because we think they will hurt the internet, and your ability to access information. We are doing this for you.

In carrying out this protest, is Wikipedia abandoning neutrality? Can I still trust Wikipedia?

We hope you continue to trust Wikipedia. We are staging this blackout because, although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence actually is not. Wikipedia’s existence depends on a free, open and uncensored Internet. We are shutting Wikipedia down for you, our readers. We support your right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe people should be able to share information without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA (and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States) don’t advance the interests of the general public. That’s why we’re doing this.

 

Just How Stupid Are We

Opinion: Rick Shenkman is dead right. I think pple ‘who matters’ know this, but instead of educating the general mass about current affairs.. they just use the ‘fact’ to gain from it. Keep the general public dumb and rule them with ease by giving them a false reality. They use news media to create and keep the ‘muggles’ in a comfortable matrix. Well.. who’s to be blamed for this? I think general public.. i wonder.. ignorance is indeed a bliss??? In my opinion the best commentary on this subject can be from here
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Arfa Karim

“If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind. If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind.” – Arfa Karim

Computer prodigy and Microsoft’s youngest certified professional Arfa Karim passed away this weekend. She was 16 years old.

Karim had been in a coma since late December, when she suffered an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest. Doctors were unable to save her after a tracheotomy complication on Saturday resulted in bleeding in her throat.

At the age of nine, she became the youngest-ever Microsoft Certified Professional, earning kudos from Bill Gates himself and an invitation to visit his company’s headquarters in America. According to CNET, Karim became interested in technology when her father bought her a computer to use for email. A year later, she was certified as a pilot by a flying club in Dubai.

In January, after Karim’s hospitalization, Gates reached out to her family and offered to pay for her medical care. Gates also floated the idea of moving Karim to the United States, but since she was on a ventilator her doctors decided against the move.

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Martin Luther King Jr. on NBC

Another real champion of most potent weapon of humanity.. nonviolence.

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Perry defends Marines accused of urinating on corpses

published in Reuters on January 15, 2002.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, scrambling to keep his U.S. presidential bid alive, accused the Obama administration on Sunday of over-reacting to a videotape that shows four Marines appearing to urinate on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

“These kids made a mistake. [1] There’s not any doubt about it. They shouldn’t have done it. It’s bad,” Perry told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

“But to call it a criminal act, I think, is over the top [2],” said Perry, who faces a possible make-or-break performance in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary on Saturday.

The U.S. Marine Corps named an investigative officer last week to decide what, if any, charges to bring against the four Marines shown in the widely circulated videotape.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other members of the Obama administration have denounced the action by the Marines [3].

“Defiling, desecrating, mocking, photographing or filming for personal use insurgent dead constitutes a grave breach of the (law of armed conflict),” Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, who heads day-to-day Afghan operations, wrote the troops last week [4].

Perry, a former Air Force pilot, said the four Marines should be appropriately punished. “But going after them as a criminal act, I think (is) really a bad message [5],” he said.

Suggesting that armed conflict can alter personal behavior, Perry noted that “there is a picture” of legendary Army General George Patton urinating in the Rhine River [6] in Germany near the end of World War Two.

“Although there’s not a picture,” Perry added, British Prime Minister Winston “Churchill did the same thing on the Siegfried line [7],” a massive wall of German defenses.

Doubts / Questions :

[1]  invading and killing people in a country is kinda okay ?

[2] if invading and killing aren’t criminal.. peeing shudn’t be a criminal either…. ehhh ?

[3] denouncing is considered an over-reaction ?

[4] breach of law of armed conflict isn’t a criminal act ?

[5] bad message to…  ?

[6] & [7] river.. barren land… equals  dead body ? public urination is the issue here ?

opinion:

history very clearly shows what a war can do…  it makes ordinary humans do all kinds of evil things like rapes and genocide. If we don’t learn from the incidents of past centuries… that wars are no good for us… human race will one day commit a drastic mistake and become its own ‘asteroid’.

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