In an unique attempt to register its protest against the draconian and short-sighted SOPA, Wikipedia, the largest and widely used free online encyclopedia, has blacked and stalled their Wikipedia website. This is not permanent but could very well be the case in future if the USA congress passes the act that is SOPA! In a way Wikipedia is showing us glimpses of that dark future. This is a very serious matter and one that relates to our freedom and integrity. There are some serious flaws in the design and proposal of SOPA/PIPA, which could in effect toll the death bell of a free and boundless internet. The likes of Google,Yahoo, Facebook and PayPal have already raised their voices against this draconian act officially and many more are joining them everyday. You can find a full list of the names protesting SOPA here. But Wikipedia has taken the protest to a new level after today's event. We would like to congratulate them for their efforts as this is not just a concern of USA anymore and everyone from every country in the world should raise their voices about how they want their internet to be in upcoming days. A free and expressive internet is what we all strive for and it is our responsibility to protect the very essence of the internet as we know it. In this small personal blog of mine I try to concentrate on PC technologies surrounding us but under these circumstances I believe we all should learn about the potential threats from SOPA/PIPA and raise our voices against it.
I also found some good articles on this concerning matter, read them to have a better understanding.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/246516/stop_sopa_a_plea_from_the_inventors_of_the_internet.html, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/17/stop-sopa-or-web-will-go-dark
Update: Many others including Craiglist, Reddit and Electronic Frontier Foundation also decided to black-out their respective sites. Here is more.
One needs to support the Wikipedia protest indeed. Sopa would make it difficult, if not impossible, for search engines to operate, particularly for for an generic filesearch engine, like us. When crawling the Internet automatically for data and information, and offering them to the public for search purposes, it is technically just not possible to scan all links for any possible copyright violations.
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ReplyDeleteThanks iFlame for this post. Did not know much about this sopa, it looks like not many knows or care about it, not at least where I work. And you are right, if they are able to pass this kind of law in USA, it will only encourage authorities around the world to introduce their own versions. I can only imagine the short of plans they'll come out with here in India. I mean the ones who're making these laws, do they even use the net? Remember the Indian OLPC project? the dumb HRD minister showing off a non functional digital diary because they told him it was a laptop!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, where is your Llano/fusion review, waiting for that:)
Thanks for your comments :) I agree with what File Search Engine said. Anyone who has even slightest of idea about how the web works would realize the impracticality of such a proposal. It's not feasible to scan and filter every link for possible copyright infringement. Then there are possibilities of intentional posting of such links by competitors, trolls or even mischievous users. I'm not comfortable with the idea of authorities having too much control over the web, the last thing we would want is to be controlled by politicians and media moguls! Piracy is serious issue, no denying of that fact but surely SOPA/PIPA aren't the answers we're looking for. This kind of laws would cause more harm than they'd do goods.
ReplyDelete@Samnath, that's the point! Those who're making policies about how the internet should work, don't have any clues about how the net works in reality! I do remember the event you're referencing, kinda proves my point - lawmakers might be good lawyers but they don't know much about the tech. Most of them use Macbooks and iPads anyway ;)
ReplyDeleteI've had some hours playing with one unlocked Llano 3870K, which is the newest refreshment of the A8 series of Fusion APUs but unfortunately couldn't run any benchmarks on it. But I'll do an article about AMD Fusion very soon. The A6/A8 series of APUs are very capable chips, no doubt.