Author Archives: Baka

The Black Out

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Many sites today have taken up arms against the acts today by use of a blackout. What is a blackout I hear you asking? It’s a really simple and highly effective tactic, all they’ve done is closed down their front pages and linked them to petitions against the acts or they’ve left information about the acts. Here are a few examples just a to make a short list of sites that have participated.

1- WordPress
2- Wikipedia
3- Reddit
4- Mozilla
5- Minecraft

Many more websites have taken part in this movement, this list is just a few of the more notable sites. I have personally seen the effect it’s having, as people who I know who are not techies are posting links on social networking sites. It’s become so notable it’s being mentioned on British radio shows. The fact that high traffic websites are now taking part is really helping to increase awareness about what is actually going on with these acts is great news.

SOPA / PIPA

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What are your thoughts on making a communist internet? Sounds really appealing right, the congress resumes the discussions on Wednesday 21st December today. What are they discussing you ask? Well it’s the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) & Protect IP Act (PIPA) both of which could change the internet as we currently know it. It’s allows DNS blocking and the take down of websites that actively promote and take part in piracy. The main reason this is happening is because of Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) & Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). SOPA isn’t just about piracy; it’s about intellectual property-all property.

The entertainment industry has already proven that they can’t be trusted. Just this week, they abused the DMCA filters on YouTube to take down a video that they had no legal claim to, merely because they didn’t like the message it was spreading about these Acts. The song was called Mega Upload named after the great website for file sharing. It was made by many famous artists including – Diddy, Drake, Lil Wayne & many more artists. Mega Upload is a site predicted to have about 4% of the internet’s content. For a while the video was taken down due to Universal trying to claim Copyright infringements that just didn’t exist at all. This was in useless thought people were already re-uploading the song.

With the proposed ideas on the act there comes a lot of downsides sites you use might just disappear. Google has been filtering its search results for years. That’s proven very useful for the content owner representatives like the MPAA and RIAA. Many security problems also arise with the fact that people will try to work around these issues. Just remember that PIPA is just as bad an act and could cause just as many problems.