[immortal]

What the hell is going on?


Imagine a World
Without Free KnowledgeFor over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more.

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[Tres Juicy]

immortal, on 18 January 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

What the hell is going on?


Imagine a World
Without Free KnowledgeFor over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more.

Make your voice heard


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It explains it all in the Learn more link,

You can still get onto the french wiki with a bit of forced browsing and use google translate to read it

[swansont]

immortal, on 18 January 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

What the hell is going on?

What the hell is going on with the blackout, or what the hell is going on with idiotic legislation that places corporations above people, can be horribly abused and shows a stunning ignorance of this thing we call the internet?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It's a result of this:

http://www.sciencefo...pic/62511-sopa/

SOPA particularly would make it very dangerous for a website like Wikipedia to remain in operation. As soon as a copyright holder makes a complaint that it's harboring copyrighted content, Wikipedia's payment processor would be required to stop processing funds for Wikipedia. No court order or judicial review required -- it must be done within 5 days of the complaint, which is sent directly to the payment processor.

[immortal]

swansont, on 18 January 2012 - 02:11 PM, said:

What the hell is going on with the blackout, or what the hell is going on with idiotic legislation that places corporations above people, can be horribly abused and shows a stunning ignorance of this thing we call the internet?

I was shocked for the former as well as for the latter reasons.

[Weirdmaskman]

I just accessed wikki now.... I guess I missed out on this

[michel123456]

It shows also the fragility of the Internet.
Just because the owner of Wikipedia is upset with some forth coming legislation, he shuts the site off. It's kind of reaction to "I will make you shut up",

no you will not, I will shut up.

It is well understood that the closing is a way to adertise opposition, and I suppose the goal has been reached. But it shows also how easily a Web empire can be shut down.

I used to ramble on another Forum some years ago, till the day the entire site disappeared. Fortunately it appeared back a few months later, but it was a schock.
That's all suspended by a string.*

*do we say that in English?

This post has been edited by michel123456: 18 January 2012 - 06:00 PM

[JustinW]

I understand the point that wiki is trying to make, but is it really going to accomplish anything more than prolonging one's ignorance for a day? Will it serve as a point to be taken seriously by those who can vote down this new absurd law? Do those elites in Washington even use wiki? And if not, how the point reach those law makers in a way that they will take seriously? I'm all for the voting down of this law but I feel that other options would be more effective, although I don't know what they would be right off hand.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

When Tumblr censored user's blog administration pages, they managed to cause several tens of thousands of phone calls to Congress. Wikipedia reaches even more people.

[JustinW]

Good point. I was thinking something along the lines of a mass calling on Congress.

[Klaynos]

It's a good way to raise awareness in my opinion.

And has had an effect:

https://www.facebook...340889625936408

[ewmon]

Cap, on 18 January 2012 - 02:12 PM, said:

SOPA particularly would make it very dangerous for a website like Wikipedia to remain in operation. As soon as a copyright holder makes a complaint that it's harboring copyrighted content, Wikipedia's payment processor would be required to stop processing funds for Wikipedia.

So an entire supermarket (or supermarket chain) should be shut down after someone complains about a dented can or wilted head of lettuce being sold at a store. Same idiotic logic that a court would quickly find to be unconstitutional.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

ewmon, on 18 January 2012 - 08:01 PM, said:

So an entire supermarket (or supermarket chain) should be shut down after someone complains about a dented can or wilted head of lettuce being sold at a store. Same idiotic logic that a court would quickly find to be unconstitutional.

SOPA officially states that the site must be "dedicated to the theft of US property" for a copyright owner to make such a request of payment processors, but there is no court order or review involved, and the payment processor gets legal immunity for its actions, so it has no reason to investigate.

PROTECT IP is slightly better in that it requires a court order, but it is still incredibly vague in its terms, and most sites could not afford to mount a legal defense.

[StringJunky]

michel123456, on 18 January 2012 - 05:59 PM, said:

That's all suspended by a string.*

*do we say that in English?

How you put it was fine and understandable but a native English speaker would most likely word it as: "It's all hanging by a thread".

[ewmon]

I contacted my legislators and told them not to make the SOPA and PIPA bills overly broad, constitutionally vague, unnecessarily restrictive etc.

There's something called "legislative intent" in referring to what the legislators intend the law to do, which is later called "the spirit of the law". It's when the "the letter of the law" — that is, what the canonized code says literally, can be (and usually is) somewhat different, which can be used beyond the lawmakers' intentions.

This dissonance can be one of the head points in cases that question a law. One side argues the (original) legislative intent, while the other side argues the law's appropriate application to (subsequent, current and future) conditions unseen or not considered when the law was written.

There's also something called "legal fiction" that's very important in law. Generally, a party asks, "What if this situation were to fall under this law?". British legal historian Sir Henry Maine in his Ancient Law (1861) gave an example where a Roman court might consider giving a right of Roman citizens to the Roman Empire's non-Roman citizens. A "what if" question. How would it benefit, how would it harm?

[CaptainPanic]

JustinW, on 18 January 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

I understand the point that wiki is trying to make, but is it really going to accomplish anything more than prolonging one's ignorance for a day? Will it serve as a point to be taken seriously by those who can vote down this new absurd law? Do those elites in Washington even use wiki? And if not, how the point reach those law makers in a way that they will take seriously? I'm all for the voting down of this law but I feel that other options would be more effective, although I don't know what they would be right off hand.

Maybe... maybe not.
But YOU are in a position to vote for who makes the decisions in Washington.

Figure out who's making this law, and do not vote for them. SOPA is moronic.

I'm not living in the USA, so I just have to hope that America doesn't destroy the internet. I have no democratic power, but I might well be a victim if some publishing company with a commercial encyclopedia decides to gain back some market shares by shutting down wikipedia. From an economic standpoint, any publishing company with encyclopedias is stupid not to at least try. And SOPA pretty much guarantees success.

[ewmon]

I found this 14-minute TED presentation by Clay Shirky that's rather interesting from the historical perspective.

[Suxamethonium]

My first thought would be that major companies would host sites overseas to escape the legislation? If this is insufficient some big companies may even shift ownership to another country??

However my reason for commenting was simply- If it happens again, and you want to use wiki- just turn of "enable javascript" in your browser, as it was simply a script (im guessing called by a central CSS code) that "blacked out" the page in the first place. Just remember to re-enable before using script based pages like facebook.

[immortal]

Suxamethonium, on 22 January 2012 - 09:59 AM, said:

However my reason for commenting was simply- If it happens again, and you want to use wiki- just turn of "enable javascript" in your browser, as it was simply a script (im guessing called by a central CSS code) that "blacked out" the page in the first place. Just remember to re-enable before using script based pages like facebook.

The script will display a message by default saying "Enable your javascript on this browser to see an important message" when that option is disabled, isn't it? Are you sure that we can access wiki or any other website like this when the website is blacked out by a javascript code? Does it work?

[John Cuthber]

Ok, so people found work rounds.
So what?
The point wasn't to stop people using WIKI, it was to make them think about the silly legislation.
If they really wanted to close it down they could just switch off the servers.
How much use would disabling scripts be then?