Thread: SOPA/PIPA

You may have heard these terms in recent weeks. If these pieces of legislation are enacted, many if not all small enthusiast web sites may be negatively affected. If you like the freedoms we enjoy on the world wide web, please take the time to go to one of these links and get more info.

Take a minute to contact your state representatives and let them know that you are AGAINST SOPA!!!

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Wikipedia

Already emailed my representative. Got a nice, automated reply.

I've already contacted all three of my federal representitives, advising them to "*VOTE NO* on SOPA & PIPA", both dangerous pieces of legislation. I urge you to do the same!! This issue is the biggest single crossroad in the history of the Information Age. It will affect EVERYTHING in our increasingly internet-dependent lives.. starting with free speech.

I've put my name on the list. I used sirennets zipcode as im not in the US.

The Senate 'contact us' page was VERY slow today. One of them timed out on me 3 times while trying to submit a message.

Anyone have a Link to VOTE NO to this? We all must say NO!

Originally Posted by ryanm

The Senate 'contact us' page was VERY slow today. One of them timed out on me 3 times while trying to submit a message.

I had the exact same experience. All three pages (the two Sens and one Rep) were slow as hell. I had to wait for over an hour on two of them before my message would go thru. And that's more than likely a VERY good thing. The servers were slow and/or malfuncting because of a huge response on this subject.

Originally Posted by LRGJr72

I had the exact same experience. All three pages (the two Sens and one Rep) were slow as hell. I had to wait for over an hour on two of them before my message would go thru. And that's more than likely a VERY good thing. The servers were slow and/or malfuncting because of a huge response on this subject.

I hope so. I hope it wasn't some kind of DDoS attack on the sites.

My rep's site went through immediately. Both senate sites were slow for me.

An overloaded site is a Distributed Denial of Service attack, it's just not intentional. This happens quite often actually, during a London bank run, so many people tried to withdraw their funds that they essentially DDoS'd the bank.

Got this e-mail yesterday from act.fightforthefuture.org:

Today was nuts, right?

Google launched a petition. Wikipedia voted to shut itself off. Senators' websites went down just from the sheer surge of voters trying to write them. NYC and SF geeks had protests that packed city blocks.

You made history today: nothing like this has ever happened before. Tech companies and users teamed up. Tens of millions of people who make the internet what it is joined together to defend their freedoms. The free network defended itself. Whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: from today forward, it will be much harder to mess up the internet.
The really crazy part? We might even win.

Approaching Monday's crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA. Last week there were 5. And it just takes just 41 solid "no" votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate. What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach.
But don't trust predictions. The forces behind SOPA & PIPA (mostly movie companies) can make small changes to these bills until they know they have the votes to pass. Members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, but they don't understand why--so they're easily duped by superficial changes. The Senate returns next week, and the next few days are critical. Here are two things to think about:

1. Plan on calling your Senator every day next week. Pick up the phone each morning and call your Senators' offices, until they vote "no" on cloture. If your site participated today, consider running a "Call the Senate" link all next week.

2. Tomorrow, drop in at your Senators' district offices. We don't have a cool map widget to show you the offices nearest you (we're too exhausted! any takers?). So do it the old fashioned way: use Google, or the phonebook to find the address, and just walk in, say you oppose PIPA, and urge the Senator to vote "no" on cloture. These drop-in visits make our spectacular online protests more tangible and credible.

That's it for now. Be proud and stay on it!

--Holmes, Tiffiniy, and the whole Fight for the Future team.

___

P.S. Huge credit goes to participants in the 11/16 American Censorship Day protest: Mozilla, 4chan, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, and thousands of others. That's what got this ball rolling! Reddit, both the community and the team behind it, you're amazing. And of course, thanks to the Wikimedians whose patient and inexorable pursuit of the right answer brought them to take world-changing action. Thanks to David S, David K, Cory D, and E Stark for bold action at critical times.

P.P.S. If you haven't already, show this video to as many people as you can. It works! http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

The more they make the American public ultra-pissed off at them (just look at their rating of 11% approval), the more scared and vulnerable they become.

I think this song is appropriate for the topic :

The music clip, would most likely, not be able to be used on this site, without permission/royalties if SOPA passed. I'm sending an emil to my congresspersons today!
Clarence

Originally Posted by Clarence H

The music clip, would most likely, not be able to be used on this site, without permission/royalties if SOPA passed. I'm sending an emil to my congresspersons today!
Clarence

That would get the whole site closed under sopa

Its extremely important to do what's encouraged in this thread. I see these pieces of legislation as corporate terrorism; and shame on our elected officials for tolerating and encouraging this bullshit. I'm afraid that some of the more computer affluent Americans won't be taking to this kindly; they already took down the FBI and Justice gov't sites in protest for a bit yesterday. God only knows what stunts they'd pull if SOPA/PIPA were actually passed.

Originally Posted by JohnMarcson

That would get the whole site closed under sopa

Duh, I'd have singlehandly destroy ELB !!! Not a great feeling right now after this realization.....

F'in politicians. Nearly the entire internet would be shut down just for stupid little crap, even a music track, or part of a movie posted. It seems it's all they want to do to the American people with bills like this: Control and restrict the will of the people for their sick pleasures.

UPDATE: Anonymous Retaliates Over Megaupload, Megavideo Shutdown: SOPA, PIPA Links? | Fox Business
I may not agree with most of the viewpoints of WHOEVER these people are, but this one time I agree with them. When the gov't pushes, they showed the people WILL push back, harder.

And today: SOPA and PIPA postponed indefinitely after protests - Jan. 20, 2012

Good thing more people are waking up to this type of garbage and not taking it laying down.

This was a small victory, indeed. But beware: they're only postponing the respective votes on SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate. Which means they'll be back, and it's likely that after the media firestorm dies down, they may pass with little to no fanfare, and we're screwed all the same.

While we're at it, check out the ACTA Treaty making its way through the EU right now. That's even scarier (and you didn't think it could get worse) than SOPA/PIPA, and it goes even further than those two combined (we're talking searches of iPods, phones, tablets and mobile devices at border crossings here...).