Seattle Nesties
we're having twins!
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
censorship
can some one please tell me more about this censorship bill in congress and why google.com looks like it does right now?
we're having twins!
Re: censorship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CongressLookup?zip=98058
never mind. wikipedia saved the day.
Since I live in the Silicon Valley area and since DH works with one of the internet companies that has threatened to go black for SOPA (but likely won't because too many people would freak out if this website went offline)... I've followed this issue closely for months.
In principle, SOPA (and PIPA) seem like good ideas - I don't think anyone argues that piracy causes businesses to lose money, and it would be great if we could find a way to curb it. Obviously, online piracy is one of the biggest issues because the distribution channel is so prevalent and easy to access. Therefore, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was introduced to try to combat online piracy (as was PIPA, the Protect IP Act).
The problem is that it's much too restrictive and places way too much burden on the companies that serve as information/dissemination hubs. It's theoretically impossible to enforce efficiently and cost-effectively, IMO. The basic premise behind SOPA is that each individual website (Facebook, Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.) is responsible for ensuring that no copyrighted information is shared via their website. It would be prohibitively costly for companies to do that (imagine if Facebook or YouTube had to pay people to screen EVERY post or video that was shared, linked, or posted on these sites), and the websites can be shut down entirely for failing to comply. The general feeling of people in Silicon Valley is that both of these bills severely threaten freedom of speech, and would undermine a lot of the technical developments coming out of Silicon Valley and stifle innovation. For example, many SV venture capitalists (the people who give money to start-ups to work on their products) have said they would no longer invest in online start-ups if SOPA and PIPA pass, because the risk of those companies not panning out becomes much too high. If that were the case, companies such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter may never exist (and all the jobs and revenue streams they produce would go along as well), because all three of those companies received funding from VCs early on in the process. They now employ thousands of people and have had significant impact throughout the world (many argue the Arab Spring wouldn't have happened without Facebook and Twitter).
As they're written, the language is so vague and reaching that it really has a lot of technology companies (and people who value freedom of speech, information dissemination, etc.) up in arms, and I would say rightfully so. I'm 100% opposed to both bills - I don't wish to have my internet censored the same way that people in China and other foreign countries do, and that's pretty similar to what SOPA could amount to. I am very hopeful neither of these bills will pass (at least in their current state) and I'm thrilled to see how it's going mainstream now since Wikipedia went black.
thank you for that response. wikipedia didn't give me that much info.
Oooh, I get to get my nerd on.
DISCLAIMER: the opinions here are my own and do not represent the views of my Dilbertland employer or my hypothetical new Casual Gaming Company employer.
Basically, major content producers (mostly the movie industry, but also the video game industry, music industry and book publishers) hate internet piracy. There are already a bunch of kind of crazy laws on the books that make it incredibly easy for content producers to sue people for piracy and demand pretty big settlements. There's an entire industry of companies and lawyers who basically try to figure out who's pirating movies and music, guess which ones are worth suing, and sue them. But there are certain loopholes. If the server is in another country, for instance, things get trickier.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (the House bill that _everyone_ is mad about) and the Protect IP Act (the Senate bill that many people are mad about but not as many as SOPA) increase the penalties and broaden the definition of piracy and place the burden on any content provider. Also, the new definition is so vague that most "mashups" would be considered piracy and anyone who hosts user-uploaded music, videos, pictures, blogs, etc. For instance take the Futurama "Not Sure If Trolling" meme:
Today, FOX can sue the creator of this meme for copyright infringement, or demand that someone hosting the image take it down because it's a copyright violation. The meme creator then has some things they can do to try and undo the take down notice. Importantly as long as the hoster responds to the takedown notice, the host can't be sued. Under SOPA/PIPA, whoever hosted this meme would have to *affirmatively* police every uploaded image/movie/sound file/blog post for copyright violations. Big sites like youtube.com have the resources to do this, but it would be difficult for new companies to get started in this s pace without an army of lawyers to help them fend of the movie/video game/music industry's army of lawyers (which means the company probably wouldn't even get started).
In addition ISPs, search engines, and online payment processors would be required to de-list any website, foreign or domestic, that the Department of Justice deemed to be a have for piracy, without any sort of due process for said website. This is being compared to "China-style censorship", which is true in *how* the sites would be de-listed, even if it's not *why* they'd be delisted.
A third and much smaller concern is that the piracy definition makes it sound like anyone who has a live stream of themselves playing video games would now face huge fines and/or prison sentences. This is sort of new because the idea of people streaming themselves playing games is sort of new.
HTH!
1st year anniversary in Victoria with a killer whale topiary!
dudes! we need cliff notes! If I wanted to read that much I'd go find the actual government document
Planning Bio
Married Bio
Not to hijack this thread (since I think education on SOPA / PIPA is great), did this pan out? If so, congrats! I'm sorry we never were able to connect over the phone but hopefully the e-mail I sent got to you in time. And hopefully you enjoy your new endeavor...
Netflix would be fine because they license all the content and therefore are paying the fees to distribute it. The sites like justin.tv, though, would likely be shut down in an instant (they oftentimes stream content that you have to pay for, like NFL games, via people outside the US because the laws are very lax).
That being said, while Netflix would be fine, it's still a real issue for a lot of companies. Think about how many times you've seen someone share something on Facebook that was copyrighted - maybe the SNL skit featuring Tim Tebow and Jesus (I reference that only because I saw it several times recently)? Depending on how that skit is shared (uploaded versus shared through the NBC site), Facebook could be shut down for not screening it properly. It's a good idea in theory, but the execution and over-arching authority it gives the music / video industry execs is just scary.
Also, somewhat unrelated, but if we're so concerned about piracy, why do we look the other way when those guys on NYC street corners sell knock-offs of everything? It's the same concept. So I find this to be mildly hypocritical, targeting just one segment of pirated goods.
I have one more round of interviews which was s upposed to be tomorrow but now looks like it will be snowed out...
1st year anniversary in Victoria with a killer whale topiary!
got it. that is nuts. so the person who posted it won't be in trouble, just the website that hosted it? or will both receive punishment?
it sounds like a good idea in theory.. but kinda shiitty.
Awesome - best of luck to you! I hope you get the offer.
Just my take on it, but suing individual people is bad for business. Remember when Napster was all the rage and the RIAA started suing people for $75,000 per downloaded song?
1. You can't suck blood from a turnip - suing people who can't pay that fee is a waste of time and resources.
2. They say any PR is good PR, but I'm inclined to think that the images of the big, bad, very wealthy RIAA suing the poor grandmother whose grandchild downloaded some Destiny's Child song didn't help their cause. The same way going after individuals isn't good for business, it isn't good for Congress, either. And they all want to get elected next year.
3. I think they're trying to target the "middle man" in this scenario because they have the greatest reach / impact. Look at how quickly things get reshared on Facebook - their audience is so large that once something "goes viral" there you're screwed. There's more bang for your buck (when it comes to enforcement) to go after the website companies, even if they're not the ones actually posting it or breaking the law, because they end up hosting it and furthering the dissemination of it.
Worse yet, there is no practical recourse for sites that get shut down due to this crappy legislation, because it's "guilty until proven innocent" -- they can try to go to court for it, but they don't have any guarantee of a speedy trial -- and, from my understanding, each ISP would be responsible for maintaining their own lists of blocked sites. So, uh, what're the odds that Comcast will block out Verizon's site, etc? Pretty good, I suspect.
Furthermore, SOPA in particular wants to mess with the underlying infrastructure of the internet -- blocking out DNS accessibility. And since the root DNS servers are in the US, this could have world-wide consequences.
For even MORE fun, none of anything they're proposing would stop the pirates that are actually causing the problems -- they can and will find workarounds to continue earning their incomes off of piracy -- all it does us fsck over the rest of us.
Here's a good article on the subject from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech