Stop SOPA, Stop PIPA, Stop Censorship
Update: Now that SOPA has been put on the back burner, the next thing to protest is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), an international treaty which could have massive repercussions on the freedom of the internet.
Update 2 (5 July 2012): ACTA rejected by EU :)
Anyone who follows Security Generation will know that I’m a big advocate of civil liberties and freedom in general. The internet is currently a multicultural and multimedia hub of information, ideas, creativity and innovation, and there is a risk this could be irrevocably changed. Granted there is also a lot of crap on the internet, but freedom works both ways. Whilst the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) intend to reduce piracy on the net, in reality they would hand vast amounts of power over to industry copyright holders, who would then have the ability to have sites blocked and content taken down, inhibit free speech and bring . For more information about all of this, check out this good summary article.
Due to the threat that these acts would pose to the open internet, many large internet companies have stated their opposition including Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, eBay, and Wikimedia, as well as civil liberties groups such as the ACLU and the EFF. On January 18, these and countless other blogs and sites, including Security Generation, will be protesting this legislation by blacking out (read: censor) parts of their sites and educating users about the danger of american censorship.
If you have a blog or website, you’re encouraged to add your voice to the cause. CloudFlare users will be able to easily participate just by enabling the new Stop Censorship app, which will black out large chunks of text on your site, and inform your users about the dangers presented by this type of legislation. WordPress users without CloudFlare can also join in by installing one of the many Stop SOPA/PIPA plugins.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/31100268 w=600]
This is my favorite anti-SOPA song so far:
Illinois Man Faces 75 Years in Prison for Recording Police
From BoingBoing: “42-year-old Michael Allison of Illinois could spend the rest of his life in prison for recording police in public. He faces five counts of eavesdropping, a class one felony”. That’s the equivalent of rape.
This is absolutely crazy. How law-abiding and tax-paying citizens (who pay for the police) can be harassed for wanting to make on-duty police officers accountable for their actions is beyond understanding. All one has to do is look at the sheer quantity of illegal police behaviour (and more), to see why the free recording of police officers is so absolutely necessary; both for the public’s protection and sometimes the police officers’.
The definition of eavesdropping is “to listen secretly to the private conversation of others”, in this case the police not only knew they were being recorded (edit: allegedly, if recent reports are true, officers were NOT aware they were being recorded, which is what landed Allison in hot water), but it was a conversation between them and Michael Allison. If police officers are allowed to record audio or video of the public with impunity, the public should be allowed to record the police going about their official duties. 75 years for recording on-duty police officers doesn’t even pass the guffaw test for me, a sensible jury will never convict him, if this ever even goes to court – END OF STORY.
[Updated 7/9/11] If recent reports are true, Michael Allison may also have been stupid as well as unlucky. Apparently he covertly recorded court proceedings (which is definitely illegal), and then lied about it to the judge (also illegal), which is how he ended up with all the additional counts of eavesdropping.
Watch the video below for the full story, it’s a great summary.
In a related story where a man was arrested for filming police in Massachusetts, a federal court ruled that videotaping police is an unambiguous and constitutionally protected right.
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