Global internet "Black Out" day!

Event though SOPA is temporarily crippled it is not yet dead, and PIPA (the lesser of two evils?) is still going strong. So the fight against internet censorship i all but over... it has just begun.

In fact today Wednesday January 18th will be a global internet "Black Out" day, basically an internet strike. This in protest againt SOPA and PIPA.

Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, WordPress, BoingBoing, and many others will shut down their sites for different lengths of time (Wikipedia a full 24 hours) in protest today.

Even Google are doing their part and although they will not go dark today they will however be linking to anti-SOPA/PIPA information that will be seen by millions of users worldwide.

Even political parties are taking a stand....

Today the Swedish Pirate Party and It´s youth league, Young Pirates join in on the worldwide web strike.

"Today, Wednesday January 18th, a significant proportion of the Internet is on strike against the proposed U.S. censorship laws SOPA/PIPA. True adding a black screen or otherwise censoring their websites organizations, companies and individuals are taking part in this global “Black Out”.

Legislative packages SOPA/PIPA opens for the possibility that at any time and without a proper legal process shut down sites that are suspected of copyright infringement.

- Even today, the copyright industry is acting extremely aggressively and uses accusations of copyright infringement as a means to silence people and organizations, says Anna Troberg, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party. With the support of the SOPA/PIPA it would be an even greater threat to our right to freedom of expression, fundamental rule of law and democracy.

- It is extremely important to show how much of what we all take for granted in our every day life would be lost if SOPA/PIPA legislation goes through, says Troberg. Internet is not copyright industry's private youth center, which they can lock the door to when they feel like it. The Internet is a democratic tool that belongs to us all.

SOPA/PIPA and other similar legislation are a real threat to individuals' opportunities to gain a voice in public debate. The ability for individual users to enrich the internet’s waste ecosystem would suffer greatly as these laws in principle would prevent user-generated material, such as comments, twitter and other social media.

- We hope that the strike will cause the politicians to become aware of how great off impact this kind of repressive legislation may have on the society we have built on and around the internet, says Troberg. Today, anyone who has a blog or website can make a real difference for our common future. I hope that as many as possible take the chance."

To read the pressrelease in Swedish.

Our sister parties in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany are also joining in on the protest against SOPA/PIPA!

I am taking a stand, are you?

Related:
Newsmill - Därför stänger vi ner Wikipedia
SvD Ledarblogg - SOPA möter hårt motstånd
Anne-Marie Eklund-Löwinder .SE - SOPA är död – PIPA lever?
Henrik Alexandersson - Onsdag: Strejk på internet
Full Mental Straightjacket - Tänk om Internet inte fanns?
Hultins tankegång - Far åt PIPA:n SOPA

Swedish media:
SvD | Metro | Aftonbladet

International media:
BBC | The Washington Post | CNN | TIME | Global Voices | The Guardian

EU joins in on SOPA criticism

EU Parliament Warns The US To Stop Censoring The Internet

"What a world we live in... when foreign countries are speaking out publicly against American censorship. For a country whose identity has been built around its strong support of the First Amendment and free speech rights, to reach the level where others are condemning our own failings on free speech is really sad. The EU Parliament has adopted, "by a large majority," a statement warning the US to refrain "from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names" due to the "need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communications."

EU Adopts Resolution Against US Domain Seizures

"The European Parliament has adopted a resolution which criticizes domain name seizures of “infringing” websites by US authorities. According to the resolution these measures need to be countered as they endanger “the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication.” With this stance the European Parliament joins an ever-growing list of opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act."

European Parliament warns of global dangers of US domain revocation proposals 

"Responding to an intervention by EDRi at a hearing recently on attacks against computer systems, the European Parliament today adopted, by a large majority, a resolution on the upcoming EU/US summit stressing “the need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names.” 

With legislative proposals such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act claiming worldwide jurisdiction for domain names and IP addresses. The definitions in SOPA are so broad that, ultimately, it could be interpreted in a way that would mean that no online resource in the global Internet would be outside US jurisdiction." 

On 15 November, over 60 civil and human rights organizations wrote a letter to Congress (co-signed by EDRi,  Access, the Association for Progressive Communications, Reporters Without Borders, Center for Technology and Society at FGV in Brazi and many more) urging the rejection of SOPA. The letter argues that the Act "is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States." 

The Swedish Pirate Party also condemns the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) (scroll down for english translation) 

Quote from the parties press release:

"- It is quite clear that the copyright industry will stop at nothing in its pursuit of file sharers, says Anna Troberg, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party. It is therefore important that lawmakers take their responsibilities and set clear boundaries for them. It is not reasonable that an industry of pure self-interest are allowed to dismantle the fundamental rights that people have fought for centuries to get.

The bills SOPA and PIPA abolishes both the rule of law and presumption of innocence. Under the proposals, it is enough that someone in the copyright industries believe that a site breaks their monopoly, in order to be able to shut down the site from the net and cut off all their income. A link on the site that is posted by a single user is enough."

Also check out the numbers and screenshots from

"The American Censorship Day November 16th"

More voices against SOPA and PIPA!

Via boingboing.net:

Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in New York Times: 

"The undersigned Internet and technology companies write to express our concern with legislative measures that have been introduced in the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, S. 968 (the “PROTECT IP Act”) and H.R. 3261 (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”)."

(Full letter .pdf)

AOL Inc.

eBay Inc. 

Facebook Inc. 

Google Inc. 

LinkedIn Corporation 

Mozilla Corp. 

Twitter, Inc. 

Yahoo! Inc. 

Zynga Game Network  

Congressional SOPA hearings: no opponents of the bill allowed

Irony Alert!
"The House is holding hearings on sweeping Internet censorship legislation this week -- and it's censoring the opposition! The bill is backed by Hollywood, Big Pharma, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of them are going to get to testify at the hearing.

But the bill's opponents -- tech companies, free speech and human rights activists, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users -- won't have a voice"

From Techdirt.com:

"With the hearings this morning (more on that later), there were also more statements publicly made against SOPA this morning. Two key ones are, unfortunately, behind Politico's paywall, so I can't link or quote too much. The first, by former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary and former NSA General Counsel, Stewart Baker, was raised a few times during the hearings. Baker focused on the problems of SOPA and PROTECT IP and their impact on online security. He notes that the DNS blocking portions of both bills "run directly counter" to the government's cybersecurity efforts:

Because “block and redirect” is exactly what crooks are doing today to bank customers. If the bills become law, the security system won’t be able to tell the difference between sites that have been blocked by law and those that have been sabotaged by hackers. Indeed, it isn’t hard to imagine crooks redirecting users to sites that say, “You were redirected here because the site you asked for has violated copyright,” while at the same time planting malware on the user’s computer.

There's much more in the article as well, noting that these laws won't actually help Hollywood and will "leave the rest of us hurting and poorer for years." The really tragic part of the hearing is that when all of the panelists were asked about Baker's statement, every single one of them admitted that they didn't understand the technology enough to really comment. The best that the MPAA's Michael O'Leary could blurt out was that he "didn't agree."

From Blog Foursquare.com:

"Today, we’re joining pretty much every major internet and technology company in voicing our opposition to the PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation before the House and Senate. For those who have never heard of these two acts, they are proposals before Congress that give incredibly aggressive censorship controls to our government (acting on behalf of rights holders).

The way copyright is currently protected on the web in the U.S.A. was established by the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The DMCA created the principle of ‘safe harbor’ for ‘service providers’ (like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or foursquare). What ‘safe harbor’ means is that a site with content from its users doesn’t have to censor everything that is posted, so long as it acts in good faith to remove infringing content and links as they’re alerted to them. Openness coupled with responsibility.

The PIPA and SOPA proposals turn that model on its head, restricting openness and imposing preemptive censorship. If a couple of rogue links are found in our Tips, PIPA and SOPA could allow the government to shut foursquare down. So, either we censor all our users (and sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter do the same) or risk being shut down by the government."

Tumblr, Firefox and Reddit Censor Websites to Protest SOPA:

"Tumblr, Firefox and Reddit drew broad black lines on their websites Wednesday to protest a proposed U.S. law that Internet companies have dubbed “censorship” and entertainment companies “piracy protection.”

Their symbolic design tweaks coincide with what several open Internet advocacy organizations have declared American Censorship Day — a day some of the Internet’s biggest web companies have dedicated to encouraging users to speak out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (called the Protect IP Act in the Senate)."

More to come....

The end of a free internet?

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

"Google knows it. Viacom knows it. The Chamber of Commerce knows it. Internet democracy groups know it. BoingBoing knows it. But, the Internet hasn't been told yet -- we're going to get blown away by the end of the year. The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. Law is very real here in the United States and legal language is often different than stated intentions -- this law would give government and corporations the power to block sites like BoingBoing over infringing links on at least one webpage posted by their users. Believe the EFF, Public Knowledge, Google when they say this bill is about much more than copyright, it's about the Internet and free speech everywhere."

"Everyone, the entire Internet community needs to stand together if we don't want to see this bill actually become law. Internet and democracy groups are planning an Internet-wide day of protest called American Censorship Day on Wednesday, November 16th for the day Congress holds a hearing on these bills to create the first American Internet censorship system. Every single person with a website can join and needs to.

Boing Boing, Grooveshark, Free Software Foundation, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Open Congress/PPF, TechDirt, Fight for the Future and dozens of other sites have created this day to ask you to join them to stop S. 978 and HR 3261, as hard as you can. Write them, protest, call them, protest, support your favorite sites, protest, sign a letter, block out your site, protest. "

Andra som bloggat: Opassande, HAX, Juristens Funderingar, Beelzebjörn