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.

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

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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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Davidov, who also was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and beyond, was 80.

For years during the Vietnam War era, Davidov carried around a deactivated cluster bomb, the size of a softball, to show anyone who would listen that Honeywell was creating weapons being used by the U.S. military.

Davidov  was arrested  many  times, for antiwar and civil rights demonstrations.

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Obama Administration:

online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs.

We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

to this Rupert Murdoch responded

Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.

A sFilm making risky as hell. This has to lead to less, hurting writers, actors, all concerned.

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Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are fighting back against increasing censorship demands from the Indian government and courts, arguing that they aren’t legally responsible for monitoring their websites and proactively removing user content that regulators deem objectionable.

The big threat for the companies at the moment is a lawsuit in a New Delhi trial court, which seeks to hold them and several other websites criminally liable for not censoring online content, including material that mocks or criticizes religious and political figures.

Google has petitioned the Delhi High Court to quash the proceedings against the companies. It has gotten no immediate relief; the hearing on its request will continue Monday. On Friday, the Indian government provided the official “sanction” that is necessary for the companies to be prosecuted, not just for hosting obscene content but also content that promotes enmity between ethnic and racial groups.

Google has petitioned the Delhi High Court to quash the proceedings against the companies. It has gotten no immediate relief; the hearing on its request will continue Monday. On Friday, the Indian government provided the official “sanction” that is necessary for the companies to be prosecuted, not just for hosting obscene content but also content that promotes enmity between ethnic and racial groups.

In a sign of the growing tension, the high court judge told the companies at a hearing earlier this week that they must find a way to monitor and delete offensive content, or India could go the way of China and start blocking entire websites more actively, according to several local news reports [1]. “You must have a stringent check. Otherwise, like China, we may pass orders banning all such websites,” Justice Suresh Kait said, according to a report in the Indian Express newspaper.

The criminal lawsuit is the latest in a series of battles under way in New Delhi over free speech on the Web. The companies are also facing a civil complaint and demands by the federal telecom ministry to remove objectionable material.

The free speech face-offs between Internet companies and Indian authorities come as Google is trying to cope with a far more direct and severe censorship regime in another key Asian market, China. Two years ago, Google said it would begin directing users to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong [2]. The company is now making a renewed push in China to market products and services such as its Android mobile phone platform.

In India, the issue is coming into sharper focus as Internet use spreads. Some analysts and lawyers also say the Indian government is stepping up its enforcement of the Web at a time when public outrage over corruption and political dysfunction is spilling into blog posts, Facebook pages and Tweets  [3].

“Before 2011, public disenchantment with the government wasn’t so great. Now it’s exploding,” said Delhi-based lawyer Apar Gupta, who represents Internet companies but isn’t involved in the case. He said blaming Web providers for content posted by users would mean “a clampdown on free speech altogether.”
Google, in a statement, confirmed that it has petitioned to quash the criminal suit but declined further comment. A Facebook spokeswoman in India declined to comment.

In general, the companies have argued that they can’t be held legally responsible for what third parties post on their sites. Under India’s information technology law, they point out, Internet companies have a “safe harbor” from such prosecutions. The companies do have a responsibility to remove content, in some cases, but only if notified about it; Google has said it still hasn’t been shown the allegedly objectionable material at the heart of the criminal case [4].

The companies also make a practical argument: it isn’t feasible, they say, to monitor all the content on their vast sites, make the subjective determination of what is offensive under Indian standards [5], and then delete it.

Hearings in the trial court will resume March 13. The criminal complaint targets content on Google’s Orkut social networking site, YouTube, Facebook, and several other smaller sites. The complainant, journalist Vinay Rai, provided the trial court with evidence in a sealed envelope—examples of what he said was objectionable. Under India’s laws, punishment for offenses, such as “promoting enmity between different groups,” includes several years of prison time and financial penalties.

In an order last month, the lower court magistrate judge, Sudesh Kumar, said he believed a criminal investigation of the Web firms was warranted after reviewing the sealed material, including posts he deemed offensive to Hindu and Muslim religious figures and Indian political leaders [6]. “The publication of such offensive and inflammatory material which has tendency to inflame minds cannot be considered to be an expression freedom of speech by any stretch of imagination in civilized society [7],” Mr. Kumar wrote in the order.

While India does block some websites outright, that generally hasn’t been its censorship tactic of choice. Instead, authorities—often local police—have pressed Web firms to take down particular content. Under regulations India put in place last year, the companies are supposed to remove material in a range of categories—for example, anything “objectionable,” “defamatory” or “blasphemous.” [8]

Doubts / Questions :

[1] :  Going china way ?  Is that the popular choice of Indian people ?

[2] :  Where can Google direct Indians to.. in case of a govt shutdown ?

[3] : Social Media x Corrupt Indian politicians.. that’s the whole story about?

[4] :  Google dont know what it is fighting against ? that’s funny.

[5] :  Indian standards ? India has so many cultural variations.. isn’t ?

[6] : religious sentiment ?  I guess HBO in India wont be telecasting the episode of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM where Larry David pees on Jesus ?

[7] : What is the definition of a civil society in India ?

[8] :  too many ambiguous words there.. ehhhh ?

Opinion:

Muzzling of  social media will kill the online free speech.  Govt will get their passive society then.. i guess.

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S&P on Friday cut the ratings of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus by two notches and the standings of France, Austria, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia by one notch each. That put highly indebted Italy on the same BBB+ level as Kazakhstan.

This crisis going no where.. it’s here to stay..

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The High Court of Justice’s ruling Wednesday on the legality of the Citizenship Law proves the erosion of this institution’s role as Israel’s guardian of civil rights [1]. Let’s look at how the justices voted at the moment of truth on the law, which bans Palestinians from living in Israel with spouses who are Israeli citizens.

In a 2006 ruling, 6 out of 11 justices said the law was unconstitutional, and in the current ruling, 6 out of 11 justices said the law, which was made more strict after the first ruling, was constitutional [2]. That’s a disappointing outcome, in part because the first ruling was made not long after the terror attacks of the second intifada, while the current ruling was made during a period of calm, due in part to coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority [3].

The title that Justice Asher Grunis gave his opinion – “Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide” – is also disappointing. No one disagrees with this, but Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, who arrived at the same judicial conclusion, recognizes that “a small group – those men and women in Israel’s Arab minority who want to marry residents of the region – must pay a heavy price for greater security for all Israelis, including their own.[4]“

Justice Grunis apparently would not agree to this wording; as he put it, he’s not someone who gives the “constitutional rights that are mentioned in the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty the most expanded and comprehensive interpretation.”

Justice Miriam Naor’s opinion is disappointing – that the constitutional right to family life means everything, but establishing a family with a foreign spouse in Israel should not receive constitutional protection [5]. It’s hard to accept this contradiction, which imposes on other countries a burden that Israel is unwilling to bear and hurts Israeli citizens’ right to family life.

The dissenting opinion properly balances the security needs of all citizens and the rights of individuals; the law should be annulled and replaced with security checks of any candidate for residence in Israel when family unification is involved.

The ruling touches on the balance between security needs and individual rights, but the public will understand it as a demographic ruling - one that protects the Jewish majority while harming the rights of Arab citizens. And thus the ruling pushes Israel down the slope of apartheid [6].

My doubts / questions :

[1] & [2] & [3] : same judges in 2006 too ?  what has then changed btwn 2006 & 2011 ?

[4] : heavy price ? like money ?

[5] : how is that different from racism ? Protection is paramount.. for that racism can be practised ?

[6] : public sentiment is against the ruling ?

Opinion :

Think of the forest when u make a decision for the tree.  Racism, in whatever form, is unhumane.

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