question of the day: What is the scariest thing about SOPA, and how scared are you?
It appears that a U.S. Congressional vote on SOPA may take place today or tomorrow. What’s SOPA, you ask? The most succinct description I’ve found is at Motherboard, where Joshua Kopstein explains that the Stop Online Piracy Act is the single most destructive piece of legislation that the internet has ever faced. SOPA, penned by a team of corporate shills who now have swell lobbyist jobs to show for it, is a bill aimed at combating online piracy in the worst conceivable way possible: By giving copyright holders and the government overreaching, due process-circumventing powers to shut down entire websites based on the mere suspicion that they might contain infringing material. More background at Hot Air, The Volokh Conspiracy, Geekosystem, and TechSpot. What is the scariest thing about SOPA, and how scared are you? I might choose the proud ignorance of America’s elected officials. Again via Motherboard: [T]he chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do. All the other horrors -- the attack on civil liberties, the kowtowing to big corporations, the overarching arrogance of the whole thing -- stem from the admitted idiocy of lawmakers who are happy to enact a law impacting a technology they know nothing about and won’t accept a bit of schooling in. You? (If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.) Disqus commentsblog comments powered by Disqus |
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Mon Dec 19 11, 8:00AM categories: Net buzz talk amongst yourselves permalink Disqus comments tip jarshare
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flickr Geekosystem Hot Air Joshua Kopstein Motherboard qotd SOPA TechSpot Universal Volokh Conspiracy Will.i.am YouTube related· question of the weekend: The space shuttle program is over, NASA’s budget is getting slashed: what’s the next big thing in space? · London photo of the day: snow in south London · Doctor Who thing of the day: way cool TARDIS purse · Saturday cute: robots made from junk by soldier in Afghanistan · Saturday cute: Ebook of the Dead · ‘Doctor Who’ thing of the day: build your own Lego TARDIS · ‘Doctor Who’ thing of the day: if Charles Schulz drew the Doctor · London photo of the day: fake “Banksy” in Islington · ‘Doctor Who’ thing of the day: make your own TARDIS birdfeeder · FlickFilosopher.com will join the SOPA protest on Wednesday, January 18 bloggyprevious post: London photo of the day: love Christmas or else next post: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (trailer) |









