It is a dark day without knowledge.  No quick term papers for kids.  No instant gratification on those millions of questions that pop into our heads, both drunk and sober.  Wikipedia has shut down in protest of planned congressional action on SOPA:  Stop On-line Piracy Act.  Go to Wiki to read their message.  It will remain down for a full 24 hours. 

Should SOPA pass, Elena and I will be forced to shut down because neither of us can assume the financial risk of having to monitor our website for  Internet ‘piracy.’  We aren’t experts. 

Please contact your senators and congressmen and women and tell them to vote NO to SOPA/PIPA. The contact information is on the Wiki page.

Please leave a message here regarding your feelings about this potentially harmful legislation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Politico:  What is SOPA?

    This is a great, easy to understand article.  This one is a tough call.

21 Thoughts to “A Day without knowledge: No Wikipedia today”

  1. Chris Dodd says that this protest is careless and irresponsible. Piracy is hurting our economy and that safeguards are in place.

    Maybe I just don’t have an opinion.

  2. marinm

    I have one and some choice words for Mr. Dodd but that’s not the kind of talk one has with mixed company.

    SOPA and PIPA need to die.

    That’s WAY too much power to hand to government and Corporate America.

    And it won’t stop anything because even if this were to go live video and music would simply revert back to how things were back in the warez scene of the 80s.

    1. @marin, I don’t know that I agree with you. Millions of copies of Avitar have been pirated, off shore. How do you reach them other than through the ISP. Dodd says there is a lot of misinformation about the bill out there.

      I think we are really talking about theft on a large scale that really is out of the hands of law enforcement. Dodd talked about how many people were cheated out of work in the film industry who werent the big name starts–people who were just the ordinary Joes who laid out the red carpet and did the film splicing and editing etc who were harmed by the theft.

      I see now that it isn’t about copy right infringement etc which is what I was worried about as a blogger.

  3. Elena

    I hate to pile on Chris Dodd, but to be fair, his comment that Google was able to censor in China demonstrates the ability to do so is NOT a model this country should follow.

    1. Where did that come from? @ Elena. Please provide more info.

  4. Elena

    I understand the piracy dilema, and it is a problem, but don’t the positives of the internet “economy” outweigh the negatives?

    Is there an alternative solution that is being proposed?

  5. Elena

    called congressman Connolly and Wolf, both are against this legislation.

    1. Did they say why? Is it just poorly contructed legislation or does it run deeper than that?

  6. Cato the Elder

    Elena :
    I hate to pile on Chris Dodd, but to be fair, his comment that Google was able to censor in China demonstrates the ability to do so is NOT a model this country should follow.

    Damn right, Elena. Also, Avatar grossed 2.8 billion worldwide. I hardly think anyone who worked on the project is going hungry because a million copies got burned.

    1. It was an example, Cato. Does that mean we just condone stealing because the movie has made a lot of money?

  7. Elena

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

    Moon, the comment was in this part of the wikepdia site.

  8. Elena

    I agree with Moon in that there is an issue with piracy, but there must be a better solution than what is being proposed.

  9. I am more concerned about Virginia retailers forcing the issue with those who buy from Amazon.com. The retailers are trying to force amazon to start collecting sales tax.

    Right now, Amazon Prime membership is the best deal in a long time. Free shipping and no sales tax if you live in Virginia.

  10. SlowpokeRodriguez

    If you need to use Wikipedia today, just press ESC while searching. Works fine.

  11. marinm

    Elena :I agree with Moon in that there is an issue with piracy, but there must be a better solution than what is being proposed.

    Agreed. Even those that are against SOPA and PIPA understand and want something done against piracy but trampling on people’s rights, censorship and takedowns without due process ain’t the right way of going about it.

    Can you imagine if we granted this in “real world” vice digital? Sending armed federales with Wal-Mart Special Forces into someones home without a warrant (just Wal-Mart’s assertion that something wrong has occured) and the burden of proof is on the homeowner and not Wal-Mart? I just don’t think I can support that.

    It also wouldn’t stop anyone from lets say… Using a foreign DNS server and search engine and then accessing those same ‘warez’ websites on their own bypassing all these “enforcement” tools provided by SOPA. But of course Congress has talked to internetworking engineers, right? Oh, wait. They did and they were told they were daft.

    🙂

  12. Cantor has tables SOPA in the House and PIPA is losing sponsors.

  13. edit then submit…

    Cantor has TABLED…..

  14. marinm

    ██ █████ love █████ ███████ ███ the government! █████ ██ they █ ██████ want █████ █████ what’s ███████best ███ █████ for ██ █ us ███! ███ █████ █████ really! ███████ ███ █████ ██ █ ███! {Parts of this comment have been found in violation of H.R. 3261, S.O.P.A and has been censored for your protection.}

  15. Cato the Elder

    http://www.itworld.com/security/242587/best-evidence-showing-we-need-sopa-based-govt-studies-never-existed

    What a surprise. It never ceases to amaze the depths that the lying liars will sink to in order to accumulate ever more power.

  16. @marinm
    Marin,

    That was brilliant. How do you do the blanks?

  17. marinm

    The blanks/blocks are part of the Extended ASCII Character set.

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964658.aspx

    Alt+Numpad: A method of entering characters by typing in the character’s decimal code with the Numeric Pad keys (Num Lock turned on). In Windows:

    Alt+, where xxx is the decimal value of a code point, generates an OEM-encoded character.
    Alt+, where xxx is the decimal value of a code point, generates a Windows-encoded character.
    Alt++, where xxxx is the hexadecimal Unicode code point, generates a Unicode-encoded (UTF-16) character.

    You can find lists by going to google and finding what symbol/glyph you want to use, finding the appropriate code and then using it.

    Or, you can cheat and just copy and paste what I wrote. 🙂

    I know I’ve already bored you but as a funny aside about UTF-8.. I’m cited in Wiki for it. 😉

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