Sopa

You probably already heard about SOPA/PIPA and the whole debate around it, right? Last Wednesday it was a really interesting day on the Internet, probably representing the biggest online activism movement ever, with all major online companies and websites protesting against the bills. The movement was pretty successful, with many senators reversing their stance on the SOPA/PIPA bills, and making it much harder to get them approved now (i.e., the Internet folks won the first battle of the war). The day

Yesterday’s battle royale over the future of the Internet has been characterized in many ways - technology companies vs. media conglomerates, content vs. distribution, and perhaps most convincingly by the Harvard Business Review as the Young Startups vs. the Old Guard. And indeed, change was in the air (and over the servers) yesterday. In protest of a pair of laws now before Congress that address online piracy, some of the most highly-trafficked websites in the U.S. made their sites inactive, dark,

(image) Earlier this week I ventured down to the Silicon Valley from my lair on the side of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin. Those of you who have visited Marin might understand why for me, after more than 25 years of working across the bridge in San Francisco and on planes around the world, I find it rather pleasant to just stay in my office and Think Big Thoughts whenever possible. But duty called, Jonathan Zittrain (who I’ve interviewed here) had asked me to participate in a conference he was hosting

A couple months ago, I wrote this about SOPA: SOPA galvanized the tech community, from start-ups to venture capitalists to the largest web companies. SOPA was an unexpected shock and a wake-up call. Well, guess what? Now the internet is awake. And I don’t think it’s going back to sleep any time soon. We might need to rally again in the near future, but we can do that. The internet learns fast.

If you visit the English Wikipedia right now (or within some hours) you’ll probably see a lot of black. No need to panic though, it’s a schedule protest against the SOPA and PIPA bills that are being promoted in the US. Here’s the description from their announcement: Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia

Wikipedia and several other sites including Reddit and Boing-Boing will go dark on Wednesday as a form of protest. What they’re protesting is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Critics of the act say that it supports wholesale censorship with no recourse for even accidental offenders. At the root is the concept that the government can block any website that carries pirated materials. Obviously, this would be a big problem for eBay, YouTube, Facebook, pretty much any website that allows users to

GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman got a Christmas card from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. It said simply, “welcome to my world.” It all began when GoDaddy announced that they were supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. The act calls for a block on any domain that allows the posting of materials protected by copyright. Sounds reasonable, until you realize that Facebook could be blocked if someone posts a celebrity photo that is owned by one of the big licensers like Getty.

When I did my blog post about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last week, things looked quite grim. The fight isn’t over, but there’s been a lot of great developments in the last few days. If you’re not familiar with SOPA (and the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate), here’s a video that covers the basics: This internet censorship under SOPA editorial by Rebecca MacKinnon also describes why SOPA would be really bad for the internet.