Jan 18th: Gone Fishin' for SOPA
Update: In a powerful example of the new dynamics of politics, the Day of Darkness persuaded 35 Senators to drop support of the Bill. Our politicians will continue to seek a balance between protecting intellectual property rights and the health of the internet and new technologies. Hopefully, in the future, they'll do so with a better understanding of the internet and the implications of any potential legislation.
The Rasputin of bad legislation - it refuses to die.
Our site will be "down" on Jan 18th along with many other sites on the internet. We usually avoid political topics around here like the plague but this one could very well affect this website and your access to it. Congress is voting on Jan 24 on SOPA, a misguided attempt to regulate the internet through essentially government censorship. There are two important ramifications:
1) It will fundamentally change your access to the internet
2) It won't do what it intends to do and will a) drive technological innovation overseas and b) have potential political ramifications (e.g it's not okay if Egypt, Iran and China censor the internet but it's okay if we do by the same methods)
Learn More:3>
Watch the video ·
American Censorship page ·
View the Infographic
Read SOPA on OpenCongress ·
Read PIPA on OpenCongress
The three most definitive articles on SOPA and PIPA: Free Speech, Problems, Security
If you feel compelled to voice your opinion to your gov representative, great. If not, that's cool but please understand why I feel that this is important. Our website depends on the free exchange of information and shared ideas everywhere from the software our servers run on to our sharing information with other windsurfing groups.
As I said in my original post, windsurfatlanta.org is not usually a venue for political discussion. There are better places for it and those discussions can be polarizing which wouldn't benefit our small community. However, this is an issue that would directly affect this web site since it is primarily driven by user contributed content. Did someone post a newspaper article scan? Did someone use a song for a soundtrack for their Hatteras video? (This very thing got my daughter banned for posting videos on facebook- yes, it really was a video of her trip to Hatteras) Did someone make a deep link (say, to an article) to a newspaper web site that doesn't permit it? All these activities not only would be on the no-no list and could get the web site black-listed from US visitors.
-wf
What was it that Will Rogers said "Everytime they pass a law, its a joke, and everytime they make a joke, its a law."
What happens in a black hole stays in a black hole.