Wikipedia and piracy

toutbrun

http://techland.time.com/2012/01/12/sopa-reddit-confirms-january-18-blackout-wikipedia-and-others-may-follow/

Wikipedia, in its English version, will be inaccessible tomorrow for they are protesting a US law against piracy. I hope no one here is in University and has a deadline

Mr Beech

toutbrun wrote:

http://techland.time.com/2012/01/12/sopa-reddit-confirms-january-18-blackout-wikipedia-and-others-may-follow/

Wikipedia, in its English version, will be inaccessible tomorrow for they are protesting a US law against piracy. I hope no one here is in University and has a deadline

In university, but I am just fine with it. I totally agree with their stance and hopefully the awareness from the website will generate some people making their own opinions on it.

toutbrun

Better article by the Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/01/internet-regulation

I know a lot of people who would not have had their degrees had it not been for Wikipedia or Sparknotes, even 4th year. Hard to believe.

Jedi Master

Wikipedia has actually gained a heck of a lot of credibility of late, since they started getting strict about citations. It still isn't trustworthy to an academic/scholarly degree but as one of my lecturers put it it's good for background knowledge.

Being a commie Brit, tho, I don't actually know what legislation the US congress are trying to pass, and how it will effect websites like Wikipedia... but if they say it's bad then I trust them!

Wilde

You must rage against the machine. )

Napoleon Plural

Not really sure why piracy is a good thing really, nicking DVDs and stuff, so we get saddled with piracy immune 3D movies. Or is there more to it than that?

Mr Beech

I am now realizing how many times I try to use Wikipedia each day... )

Mr Beech

Jedi Master wrote:

Wikipedia has actually gained a heck of a lot of credibility of late, since they started getting strict about citations. It still isn't trustworthy to an academic/scholarly degree but as one of my lecturers put it it's good for background knowledge.

Being a commie Brit, tho, I don't actually know what legislation the US congress are trying to pass, and how it will effect websites like Wikipedia... but if they say it's bad then I trust them!

It is legislation that would allow for a copyright holder to have the government shut down any site holding their content without explicit permission (a site like YouTube, for example, would be eligible for shutdown if any copyright holder claimed their content on the site. YouTube would have to comply rapidly with removing the content or else they could be blocked until willing to remove it. This would be hard on smaller companies and websites because they would have to be able to intensely and very frequently be able to find if any content is on their site without explicit permission, despite their small staff not being able to monitor with the same staffing power as larger companies. If just any one user uploads a part of a movie and YouTube is not made aware, then the government has the right to send them notice that they must comply with removing the content or face being shutdown until reviewed as having complied at a later time).

The other part of the bill, which would affect Wikipedia, is the part where any site that even contains a link to reach a different site hosting copyrighted material without explicit permission can be blocked until they comply. Wikipedia, Google, and many major forums take issue with this because they contain numerous links and it is such a sensitive law that all their links would have to be scoured to check if the sites they lead to contain copyrighted material without permission. Something as little as a source cited in Wikipedia that leads to an article with a picture that wasn't posted on that smaller site with permission would hold Wikipedia and the hosting site responsible.

It basically permits government censorship on behalf of the major corporations that produce mass amounts of copyrighted content that spreads on the web. Even good-natured sites are vulnerable if any person posts a link to any other site with misused copyrighted material.

This is how it was explained to me from what I have heard, but I apologize if I got it wrong.

toutbrun

America, home of the free and of the brave. «Free to die in the gutter» and be treated as a terrorist without due process because you protested at your University. America is free for those who can afford it, and very expensive for those who can't.

Wilde

toutbrun wrote:

America, home of the free and of the brave. «Free to die in the gutter» and be treated as a terrorist without due process because you protested at your University. America is free for those who can afford it, and very expensive for those who can't.

Although it's similar in most places and good lord don't get me started on the UK, I don't think any first world country does hypocrisy quite like America. A country founded on such amazing principles, too. Ironic is the plight of American modernity.

I'm sure Jefferson would have agreed with everything you just said, Tout. -{

Barry Nelson

toutbrun wrote:

America, home of the free and of the brave. «Free to die in the gutter» and be treated as a terrorist without due process because you protested at your University. America is free for those who can afford it, and very expensive for those who can't.

Spoken like a person who doesn't live here. As a person who does live here, I will just say I disagree.

Mr Beech

I can't say I am rich, nor do I feel bad about being in this country. There are some political things I don't like, some cultural things I feel are getting low, and plenty of other issues that may be sliding the wrong way, but there is a whole lot I love here and I sure as heck would come back often if I ever moved away from the US. But who knows, maybe I am way luckier than I think?

toutbrun

Barry Nelson wrote:

toutbrun wrote:

America, home of the free and of the brave. «Free to die in the gutter» and be treated as a terrorist without due process because you protested at your University. America is free for those who can afford it, and very expensive for those who can't.

Spoken like a person who doesn't live here. As a person who does live here, I will just say I disagree.

I'm just saying, you are the only Western country without single payer healthcare and you pay more per GDP than Canada.

45,000 Americans die each year because they can't afford healthcare (Harvard medical school numbers).