"I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people." Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller in Afghanistan
Web giants at odds with Chamber of Commerce over piracy bill - The Washington Post
Topic: Miscellaneous
9:42 am EST, Nov 19, 2011
Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names are threatening to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over a bill that would make Web companies liable for pirated content that appears on their sites.
Last month, Yahoo quietly quit the powerful business trade group, which supports the legislation. Google and the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents 2,200 firms, are warning they may do the same.
letter tacitly endorsing SOPA was sent in response to a request (linked here) by the Congressman from Hollywood, Howard Berman. In that letter Berman writes:
I believe that if we can provide an open and transparent judicial process, consistent with due process, that responds to online theft swiftly, surgically, and fairly, we set a positive precedent for others to follow.
Lets look at the "open and transparent judicial process" in SOPA, shall we?
Except in the case of an effective counter notification pursuant to paragraph (5), a payment network provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after delivery of a notification under paragraph (4), that are designed to prevent, prohibit, or suspend its service from completing payment transactions involving customers located within the United States and the Internet site, or portion thereof, that is specified in the notification under paragraph (4).
So, IP owner sends notification to payment provider with allegation, and payment provider has five days to stop processing payments for the site in question.
There is no due process here. There is no neutral decision maker. The victim has very little time to respond to the allegation before the payment provider is required to shut them off. When Berman talks about due process he is paying lip service to something which does not exist!
US State Department not for internet freedom - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
Topic: Miscellaneous
8:01 pm EST, Nov 18, 2011
Hillary Clinton's decision to come out in support of SOPA was an extremely stupid decision that will haunt her and the US State Department for as long as the current administration remains in power.
In a letter to Rep Howard Bernman, a co-sponsor of the bill, Secretary Hillary Clinton tacitly endorsed the proposed legislation, stating, "There is no contradiction between intellectual property rights protection and enforcement and ensuring freedom of expression on the internet". Prominent supporters of the bill are now distributing the letter as a sign the State Department is behind their bill.
No, there is no contradiction between intellectual property rights protection and enforcement and ensuring freedom of expression on the Internet. However, there IS a massive contradiction between having a process where anyone can take any website down with 5 days notice and no oversight from a neutral decision maker, and ensuring freedom of expression on the Internet. The US State Department ought to be intelligent enough to differentiate these things, but they aren't, and that is a problem that isn't going to go away when SOPA dies its well deserved death.
Hartmann: Journalists Enter at your own Risk - YouTube
Topic: Miscellaneous
9:10 am EST, Nov 17, 2011
What last night's raid on Occupy Wall Street did to the nation's fourth estate of journalism. And what it means for our democracy in tonight's Daily Take.
Where did it come from? I don't know. We're not going to kill it, are we Papa? No. We're not going to kill it.
SOPA seems to have been inspired by Joe Lieberman's "request" last December that Visa and Mastercard shut off donations to the non-profit organization that funds Wikileaks. They look to institutionalize that capability - to make us all little "Joe Liebermans" who can censor the Internet at will based on any unsubstantiated allegation that some crime has been committed. (Its like a super DMCA, because, you know, there is no problem at all with people filing inappropriate DMCA takedown notices.)
Robert Scheer: The Villain Occupy Wall Street Has Been Waiting For - Robert Scheer's Columns - Truthdig
Topic: Miscellaneous
8:03 am EST, Nov 17, 2011
Only in America is the arrogance of the superrich so perfectly concealed by the pretense of democracy that the 12th richest man in the nation can suppress dissent against corporate rapacity and expect his brutal actions to be viewed not as a means of preserving his own class privilege but as bureaucratically necessary to providing sanitary streets.
Bloomberg is a liar:
Even before he ordered the smashing of dissent by citizens peacefully assembled, Bloomberg denigrated their heartfelt message: “It’s fun and it’s cathartic,” he said of those huddled against the cold in a makeshift encampment, “... it’s entertaining to go and blame people. ... It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.”
Powerful people who promote the big lie must be confronted. We must not allow these liars to determine the agenda.
Penn State, my final loss of faith - Guest Voices - The Washington Post
Topic: Miscellaneous
9:06 pm EST, Nov 15, 2011
I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation...
They have failed us, over and over and over again.
I speak not specifically of our parents -- I have two loving ones -- but of the public leaders our parents’ generation has produced. With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.”
They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.
Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.
For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.
We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us -- at the orders of our leader -- to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping.
The times following September 11th called for leadership, not reckless, gluttonous tax cuts. But our leaders then, as now, seemed more concerned with flattery. Then -House Majority Leader and now-convicted felon Tom Delay told us, “nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” Not exactly Churchillian stuff.
Those of us who did enlist were ordered into Iraq on the promise of being “greeted as liberators,” in the words of our then-vice president. Several thousand of us are dead from that false promise.
We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage. In the Catholic Church, we were told to blame the media, not the abusive priests, not the bishops, not the Vatican, for making us feel that our church has failed us in its sex abuse scandal and cover-up.
Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. They downgraded our nation’s credit rating. They seem content to hand us a debt exceeding the size of our entire economy, rather than brave a fight against the fortunate and entrenched interests on K Street and Wall Street.
Now we are asking for jobs and are being told we aren’t good enough, to the tune of 3.3 million unemployed workers between the ages of 25 and 34.
This failure of a generation is as true in the halls of Congress as it is at Penn State.
The Volokh Conspiracy » My Congressional Testimony on the Need to Narrow the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:35 pm EST, Nov 15, 2011
The current version of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) poses a threat to the civil liberties of the millions of Americans who use computers and the Internet. As interpreted by the Justice Department, many if not most computer users violate the CFAA on a regular basis. Any of them could face arrest and criminal prosecution.
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS
Topic: Science
8:56 pm EST, Nov 14, 2011
Michael Koenig:
Time lapse sequences of photographs taken by Ron Garan and the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km with a high ISO HD Camera developed by NHK Japan, nicknamed the SS-HDTV camera. All credit goes to them.
When it comes to the universe, what you see is not what you get.
Neal Stephenson:
In a world where decision-makers are so close to being omniscient, it's easy to see risk as a quaint artifact of a primitive and dangerous past. Today's belief in ineluctable certainty is the true innovation-killer of our age.
Freeman Dyson:
The truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won't come to pass.
