I laughed (on the inside) at the last anonymous video that other guy posted, but I couldn't resist posting this one.
As much as people did laugh at the last Anonymous video, in hindsight the warning did prove to be warranted. Depressing as it is, the way the US government is positioning themselves has potential for revolution down the road and I don't think Anonymous is as ridiculous as people make them out to be. While the videos are dramatic, the internet is shaping up to be a hell of a battle ground and one place where international civic movements may have a lot of power to strike at international organizations.
It's all very interesting and depressing.
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"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
Yeah, Maher comes across as pretty stupid. I like how he says that he lost a lot of money because his documentary was pirated. Why does he automatically assume that the people who pirated it would have bought it in the first place? If anything, BECAUSE it was pirated, the distribution was a lot larger than it normally would have been. And in the end, doesn't he care more about his message than he does about the money he makes? He is already a rich person.
That being said, yes piracy is wrong, but the lady in the video was absolutely correct. Approach the problem with a scalpel, and not with an axe. Of course, we're talking about the US government, and they've clearly been overtaken by big business, so it isn't a surprise at all that they try to push through stupid bills like this.
The video also mentions that 80% of piracy occurs in China. To me that simply says a law like the SOPA would be similar to the War on Drugs. Majority of the drugs are being made in countries outside of the US, and yet the US is spending billions upon billions of dollars to stop distribution, without realizing that the only way to stop the supply, is to stop the creation, and spending billions locking up pot users in the US won't stop drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico from growing the stuff.
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As much as people did laugh at the last Anonymous video, in hindsight the warning did prove to be warranted. Depressing as it is, the way the US government is positioning themselves has potential for revolution down the road and I don't think Anonymous is as ridiculous as people make them out to be. While the videos are dramatic, the internet is shaping up to be a hell of a battle ground and one place where international civic movements may have a lot of power to strike at international organizations.
It's all very interesting and depressing.
Not sure that I agree with taking down CIA, FBI sites, because these agencies are simply abiding by the law that someone else wrote.
But, I actually do agree with going after the RIAA/MPAA. These 'entities' clearly have no clue what the hell they're doing, and as far as I'm concerned, if they want to spend millions bribing government officials to screw over the common person just so they can make billions more, by all means screw with them.
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Chris Dodd, ex–US senator and current CEO of the Motion Picture Ass. of America, may face a White House investigation after he made an extraordinary outburst that appeared to threaten politicians who had the audacity to take the entertainment industry’s money and then abandon SOPA/PIPA online-piracy legislation.
Quote:
Once the number of signatures on the petition reaches 25,000, the White House has to issue a statement – and as of early afternoon Washington DC time, over 19,000 signatures had been attached. It was such a petition, by the way, that prompted the White House to express its initial disapproval of SOPA.
“This is an open admission of bribery,” the petition reads, "and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting of the 'above the law' status people of Dodd's position and wealth enjoy. We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.”
"Before the American people were protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, the president managed to sign an international treaty which would permit foreign companies to demand that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) remove web content in the United States without any legal oversight. Entitled the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the treaty was signed by Obama on October 1, 2011, but it is currently a subject of discussion because the White House is circulating a petition demanding that senators ratify the treaty."
Although the title goes overboard using the word "deadly" to describe an internet treaty, it seems ACTA has some similar elements to SOPA, and Obama signed this one quietly as well, seemingly with no Congressional discussion.
Interestingly, I couldn't find many mainstream articles on this.
"Before the American people were protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, the president managed to sign an international treaty which would permit foreign companies to demand that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) remove web content in the United States without any legal oversight. Entitled the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the treaty was signed by Obama on October 1, 2011, but it is currently a subject of discussion because the White House is circulating a petition demanding that senators ratify the treaty."
Although the title goes overboard using the word "deadly" to describe an internet treaty, it seems ACTA has some similar elements to SOPA, and Obama signed this one quietly as well, seemingly with no Congressional discussion.
Interestingly, I couldn't find many mainstream articles on this.
"Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement appear quite similar to – and more expansive than – anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan."
"The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes between governments with little or no public input. The Bush administration started the process, but the Obama administration has aggressively pursued it.
Indeed, we signed ACTA in 2011.
According to critics, ACTA bypasses the sovereign laws of participating nations, forcing ISP’s across the globe to act as internet police."
^^A bi-pratisn effort!!
...and more global agreements....
"Nor is this the only international agreement in the works.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are “other plurilateral agreements, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which contains a chapter on IP enforcement that would have state signatories adopt even more restrictive copyright measures than ACTA. Similarly, negotiations over TPP are also held in secret and with little oversight by the public or civil society. These initiatives, negotiated without participation from civil society or the public, are an affront to a democratic world order. EFF will remain vigilant against these international initiatives that threaten to choke off creativity, innovation, and free speech, and will stand with EDRi, FFII, La Quadrature du Net and our other EU fellow traveller organizations in their campaign to defeat ACTA in the European Parliament in January.”"
