Image via Wikipedia
Yes, I’m feeling a tad art/photography orientated today, so I thought I’d just share this quote with you guys, about art, and what it is.
Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. - Amy Lowell
Deep.
So, here’s our tweet of the day from @Laughbook, telling us those niggling little questions that we all have. This one is personally my favorite from them, and until I go on Wikipedia and find out why it’s wrong, it always will be.
@Laughbook: What if Oxygen makes our voice really deep…. And Helium just brings it back to normal?
Morning readers! Well, I managed to get up today, apparently, and I gravitated straight to my desk, so I could fulfill my promise of another post for you guys. This article was on the home page of the NY Times, and I thought it would be very relevant, seeing as the protests finished last night, and this explains what they’ve achieved. I, personally, think that we may even have a chance of winning one over the leaders at this point, and it may even be a turning point in how things work. As you probably saw, I myself was protesting yesterday on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ among the throng of americans that were looking for web freedom too. Most europeans didn’t feel the need to do anything, seing as it’s a US bill, but I thought different. In my eyes, if the bill was passed, then it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the countries followed. That, and the SOPA (or PIPA, my memory fails me) gave some rights to oppose foreign servers, too. What about the Pirate Bay?! I’ve paid for Office 2010 and Windows 7 ultimate, but my ISO links expired! Where would I get them from?! Anyway, talk over, here’s the newsspot:
Nadine Wolf at a protest in Manhattan at the office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
The Web buzzed with protests large and small on Wednesday as the tech industry rallied against Congressional legislation to curb Internet piracy.
Some sites blacked out — among them, the English-language Wikipedia, though it was possible to access the encyclopedia through several clever workarounds — while others, including Google and Craigslist, draped their pages with information about the bills, or restricted access.
Many start-ups quickly cobbled together tech solutions to support their cause. HelloFax, for example, created a tool that let people send their representatives faxes voicing their opinions through the Web.
The effort was an unusual orchestration that began gathering steam online late Tuesday night and escalated early Wednesday morning, eventually whipping the Web into a frenzy.
Google said 4.5 million people signed its online petition to Congress, voicing displeasure at the legislation; Twitter said more than two million posts on the subject flowed through the site by early afternoon, nearly four times as many as usual.
Engine Advocacy, a service that helps people call their local members of Congress, said on Twitter that it was averaging roughly 2,000 calls per second, while Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees Wikipedia, said four million people used its blacked-out site to look up contact information for their local representative.
Opponents of the legislation also took their demonstrations into the real world in New York, San Francisco and Seattle, but drew relatively modest numbers of protesters. Still, for a group that tends to be more comfortable showing solidarity from behind the warm glow of a computer screen — by changing a profile picture or reposting a favorite motto — it was a considerable showing.
The New York rally, organized by a tech industry trade group, attracted about a thousand protesters in Midtown Manhattan.. Sebastian Delmont, 38, who works at StreetEasy, a real estate search site, said about half of his co-workers attended the protest. “Our worry is that they are building something like a Great Firewall, like in China and the Middle East,” he said.
In Washington by Wednesday morning, several lawmakers had reconsidered their support of the bills — one in the House, one in the Senate. The legislation is intended to curtail copyright abuses by preventing American search engines and Web sites from directing users to the mostly foreign sites that allow for the distribution of stolen materials like music, movies, television shows, software and other content.
The tech industry has argued that the bills are too broad, threaten free speech, stifle innovation and most likely will not even effectively eliminate piracy.
To read the rest of this article, click the link: NY Times – With Twitter, Blackouts and Demonstrations, Web Flexes Its Muscle
That’s all for now, but a photo of the day should be coming shortly, since I’ve already picked it out. All related articles are below.
AMERICANS! SIGN THE PETITION! END PIRACY, NOT LIBERTY – GOOGLE & SOPA Strike
Just to start the day, I thought I’d just post a photo of what we all seem to do. We work, work, and work. The sad thing is that there are powers over us that seem to think it funny, and try and make us all work more than we can, and control, bend, twist, and manipulate our society as they please. Protest against the PIPA and SOPA acts on Twitter, Facebook, and whatever you’re on. If you’re in America, go to Wikipedia, and enter your zip code to find the closest place to help.
Thank you.
AMERICANS! SIGN THE PETITION! END PIRACY, NOT LIBERTY – GOOGLE & SOPA Strike
Help Protest Against The PIPA & SOPA Legislations! Visit flickr.com and darken photos! Tweet freedom! To hell with this, just do something!
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and author the Protect IP Act, accused opponents Tuesday of trying to “stoke fear” through tactics like the Wikipedia blackout. “Protecting foreign criminals from liability rather than protecting American copyright holders and intellectual property developers is irresponsible, will cost American jobs, and is just wrong,” he said in a statement.
Opponents of the legislation have clearly seized the momentum in the debate. Their protests have gained traction in that key provisions were stripped out of one bill and the Obama administration has raised concerns. Legislators have already agreed to delay or drop one ire-inducing component of the bills, Domain Name System blocking, which would prevent access to sites that were found to have illegal content.
A total of 115 companies and organizations have lobbyists working on the antipiracy bills, spending millions of dollars to sway the outcome, according to federal disclosure records. They include corporate and technology giants on both sides of the legislation, with entertainment groups like News Corporation and the Recording Industry Association of America backing it and Internet firms like Google and Facebook raising concerns about it.
The largest advocates for the bills disagree with the tech industry’s main rallying cry, which is the notion that they will hurt the average Internet user or interfere with their online activities.
“The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social network sites,” said Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and a primary sponsor of the House bill.
Most people in the tech world agree that the problem of piracy needs to be addressed. But they say their main concern is that the tech industry had little influence on the language of the legislation, which is still in flux and so broadly worded that it is not entirely clear how Internet businesses will be affected. Big Internet companies say the bills could prevent entire Web sites from appearing in search results — even if the sites operate legally and most content creators want their videos or music to appear there.
“It shouldn’t apply to U.S. Web sites, but any company with a server overseas or a domain name overseas could be at risk,” said Andrew McLaughlin, vice president at Tumblr, a popular blogging service.
Read the rest of this insightful article here: NY Times – Protest on Web Uses Shutdown to Take On Two Piracy Bills
And I beg of you, please take action in some way. The internet as we know it is at stake, and that’s not just a cheesy line for effect. It’s truth.
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