So where did Wikipedia go? That’s a question millions of people are asking this morning as they find the popular online encyclopedia has gone dark.
Wikipedia, Craigslist, Reddit and other websites have blacked out in protest against two anti-piracy bills in Congress — the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) — that are pitting the entertainment industry against the tech world.
The bills were designed to stop piracy of copyrighted music, movies, and television shows. But critics including Google, Twitter, and some of the original architects of the Internet itself, say the legislation could censor the Internet, hobble online innovation and change what made the Internet what it is today.
"Wikipedia Blackout 101: What exactly are SOPA and PIPA ?"
ReplyDeleteA rundown of the basics on the controversial anti-piracy bills
by Braden Goyette, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wikipedia-sopa-pipa-article-1.1007847
So where did Wikipedia go?
ReplyDeleteThat’s a question millions of people are asking this morning as they find the popular online encyclopedia has gone dark.
Wikipedia, Craigslist, Reddit and other websites have blacked out in protest against two anti-piracy bills in Congress — the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) — that are pitting the entertainment industry against the tech world.
The bills were designed to stop piracy of copyrighted music, movies, and television shows. But critics including Google, Twitter, and some of the original architects of the Internet itself, say the legislation could censor the Internet, hobble online innovation and change what made the Internet what it is today.
Here’s our breakdown of what it all means.
JUST WHAT ARE SOPA AND PIPA?
ReplyDeleteSimply put, they would give copyright holders new ways to punish websites that host pirated content.
Both bills originally empowered copyright holders to request orders that would block access to foreign websites accused of hosting pirated content.
That means that users within the U.S. would essentially see an error message when they try to visit that website, though users in other countries would still be able to visit it. This provision has been removed from SOPA pending "further examination," though it's still included in PIPA.
SOPA also requires search engines to delete links to offending websites from their search results, while PIPA does not.
Both bills require advertisers and payment services not to do business with sites accused of piracy. They also allow internet service providers to pre-emptively block websites they believe are dedicated to piracy.
SOPA and PIPA target websites whose servers are hosted or whose domain names are registered outside of the U.S. While supporters of the bills say that this shouldn’t have any effect on American websites, many American companies have domain names registered overseas -- think of all the sites that end in letters like .ly. Though no one knows how the bills would ultimately be enforced if they became law, critics argue that domestic sites could be slammed with SOPA/PIPA-related lawsuits, and that the increased legal costs involved in running a website would raise a higher bar to founding an internet startup.
Existing U.S. law already allows the government to seize the domains of domestically hosted websites, but it first gives websites a chance to take down infringing content that may have been posted by the site's users.
WHY ARE CRITICS SO ALARMED?
ReplyDeleteCritics say the bills effectively give copyright holders the power to cripple sites they've accused of piracy, without proving that those websites are actually dedicated to spreading pirated content. With the power to block a website’s domain, delist it from search results, and force advertisers to stop doing business with them, critics fear copyright holders will be given a powerful tool to force websites out of existance.
The bills' opponents say this power could be abused for censorship, and that it threatens the free flow of information and the potential for innovation online.
“We have strong indications from venture capitalists that they would find it hard to invest in new start-ups in the user-generated content space,” Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the BBC. “Certainly innovations like Wikipedia would become very difficult if it were necessary for us to police everything that users were doing against some blacklist of websites.”
Internet security experts have also argued that blocking domain names would hamper cybersecurity efforts. On his blog, former DHS Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker wrote that the practice would "do great damage to Internet security, mainly by putting obstacles in the way of DNSSEC, a protocol designed to limit certain kinds of Internet crime." Essentially, it would become impossible for the authorities to tell the difference between websites that have been blocked for alleged piracy and sites that have been maliciously hacked.
SO WHO’S IN FAVOR AND WHO’S OPPOSED?
ReplyDeleteMusic, movie, and television producers have been active in pushing for the legislation, saying that they are losing billions of dollars to piracy each year. "Every day, American jobs are threatened by thieves from foreign-based rogue websites," the Motion Picture Association of America said in a statement Saturday. "This deplorable situation persists because U.S. law enforcement does not have the tools to fight back."
The AFL-CIO also supports SOPA and PIPA, arguing that the measures protect American jobs.
Tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, and Internet freedom organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have opposed the measure.
The White House came out against the bills as written on Saturday. "While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," three White House advisers said in a statement.
In Congress, legislators on both sides of the aisle support and oppose the bill. ProPublica has an overview of where everyone stands, including how much money they’ve received from the entertainment and tech industries.
WHERE DO THESE BILLS STAND?
ReplyDeleteSOPA is coming back to committee for a markup session in February, according to a release from one of its sponsors, Rep. Lamar Smith.
PIPA is still scheduled to go up for a procedural vote in the Senate Jan. 24.
Six GOP Senators have asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to postpone the vote, citing concerns about domain blocking in particular.