Why is SOPA Bad?

The January 18th “blackout” protest that featured censorship bars, full-screen warnings, or a blank homepage on popular websites such as Wikipedia, Wordpress and Reddit came as a surprise to some. The October, 2011 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), introduced by an even mix of Republicans and Democrats, drew immediate and continuing public opposition and outcry.

After a December post to Reddit suggested moving away from Go Daddy, a major domain registering company that volubly supported both SOPA and PIPA- the Protect IP Act-, nearly 80,000 domain names were transferred to other services, according to Fight For The Future's SOPA timeline.

On January 20, 2012, Congress postponed voting indefinitely. However, SOPA and related copyright protection acts could easily return. Understanding how these bills fit into criminology precedents is important to anyone who uses and derives value from content found off the internet. Although the aim of SOPA is important, there are vast consequences to the bill. For example, a group of students creating a video for their online school project may decide to use a Kanye West song in the background of their original video. In response, Roc-A-Fella Records could accuse the students of copyright infringement and it could be taken down without due process.

The ostensible aim of SOPA was to reduce piracy and intellectual property infringement from foreign sites. To do so, it would remove access to their URL from search engines. While this could in fact have occurred, the wording of the proposed bill unfortunately allowed for severe violations not just to copyright infringers but also content creators who major corporations simply accused of copyrighting information.

For instance, according to First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert Marvin Ammori, “Any tool that helps anyone 'circumvent' the bills' remedies are illegal...any American sites that permit you to search for, or find, The Pirate Bay's new domain is potentially liable for circumvention.” This means that sites must subject their users to an arguably insupportable level of scrutiny to prevent a stray comment, Facebook status, social media tag, video response, or any of countless communication tools in constant use from jeopardizing their legal standing. An entire service must be responsible for all content of every user.

In addition, the State Department could order advertisers, domain name system (DNS) providers, and payment processors like Paypal to dissociate themselves from any site even accused of wrongdoing, resulting in millions of dollars in potential revenue loss for them all. Through the “market-based” system too-vaguely defined in SOPA, private entities such as entertainment companies could compile lists of offensive or even suspicious sites, and demand that they be cut off from financial support long before any possible legal hearing takes place.

Because due process is not required under SOPA, the potential for abuse is massive. And not only large businesses would face handicapping from this bill. Small business owners who make their livelihood from intellectual property, such as artists and photographers, are already suffering under language in the current Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) law. The DMCA has provisions that encourage baseless accusations of copyright infringement, resulting in scare tactics that bring down websites- often an individual artist's sole source of income- without formal charges. Like the DMCA, SOPA would allow media companies and lawyers to put pressure against competitors simply by accusing them of copyright infringement.

Protecting companies from copyright infringement is not intrinsically a bad thing. Online piracy is without question a problem that needs to be addressed. However, until proper language is formulated to protect free speech, the kinds of bills being proposed to attack piracy must have appropriate oversight to prevent misuse.

Silent Dawn of Open Fascism - U.S. Enabling Act of 2011: S.1867 (National Defense Authorization Act)

ORIGINAL UPLOAD BY RT America Permission to repost granted.

Nov 29, 2011

There is a bill in the US Senate called the National Defense Authorization Act and it could be voted on as early as this week. This bill gives the president the authority to indefinitely imprison American citizens without a court hearing, both domestically and abroad. Senate Bill 1867 is bringing the battlefield to the homeland. Alex Jones, radio host of The Alex Jones Show, tells us what this could mean for America's future.



Obama has said he would veto this bill!

Major Wars and Suppression of American Freedoms Planned BEFORE 9/11BEFORE 9/11

Posted on November 9, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

Iran War Threats, Militarization of American Police and Spying on Americans All Started BEFORE 9/11

Many things which we’ve been told have only happened recently actually started a long time ago.
For example, the mainstream media claims that Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon. But the Christian Science Monitor notes that the U.S. has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran was on the verge of nuclear capability.

And the decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made before 9/11.

As another example, journalists from across the spectrum have documented the militarization of police forces in the United States, including, CNN, Huffington Post, Forbes, Esquire, The Atlantic, Salon, and the Cato Institute.
Indeed, police shooting peaceful “occupy” protesters with rubber bullets, tear gas and other projectiles and brutally beating them has brought this issue to the attention of the American public. See this, this and this.
But the militarization of police started long before 9/11 … in the 1980s. As Radley Balko testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime:

Militarization [of police forces is] a troubling trend that’s been on the rise in America’s police departments over the last 25 years.
***
Since the late 1980s, Mr. Chairman, thanks to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, millions of pieces of surplus military equipment have been given to local police departments across the country.
We’re not talking just about computers and office equipment. Military-grade semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel vehicles, tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and all manner of other equipment designed for use on the battlefield is now being used on American streets, against American citizens.
Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century.
SWAT teams were originally designed to be used in violent, emergency situations like hostage takings, acts of terrorism, or bank robberies. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, that’s primarily how they were used, and they performed marvelously.
But beginning in the early 1980s, they’ve been increasingly used for routine warrant service in drug cases and other nonviolent crimes. And thanks to the Pentagon transfer programs, there are now a lot more of them.

Many other things which we’ve been told happened after 9/11 actually occurred beforehand as well.
For example:

• The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this)

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.”

• Cheney apparently even made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: “Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.” (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

• The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11. Indeed, former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig:
  
  

  After 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

  The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

  (4:30 into this video).
  

• Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarch long before 9/11

• Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long before 9/11. And see this

• The government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this)

• It was known long before 9/11 that torture doesn’t work to produce accurate intelligence … but is an effective way to terrorize people

• And – sadly – America played dirty games to justify and win wars before 9/11

Note: 9/11 itself is beyond the scope of this essay, although the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 – and former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee – calls for a new 9/11 investigation, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11, and high-level officials are eager to spill the beans about what happened on 9/11 … but no one in Washington or the media wants to hear.

Demographics of Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street began largely as a grassroots movement, initiated locally and spread globally through use of social media. It began relatively small: a group of activists were tired of seeing what the economic crisis has done to themselves, their friends and families, and the country at large. In mid-September, many little online communities received an invitation to take part in an event the main organizers were calling “Occupy Wall Street.”

The purpose of this event was to march on Wall Street and stage a manifestation in the symbolic ground zero of the economic meltdown that has engulfed not only our country, but much of the Western world. In the month or so since, many have organized similar events in their home cities, and the movement has gone global and found hundreds of thousands of participants.

The news media, online pundits, PhD commentators, and certain government officials have sought to paint Occupiers as everything from disgruntled, unemployed neo-liberals with no real agenda to hippies and college students with nothing better to do with their time. The catchphrase of the movement is "We are the 99 percent," referring to the statistical fact that the majority of the wealth in the United States (and indeed, most of the Western world) is held by one percent of the population.

However, there is still some confusion as to who the occupiers of Zuccotti Park and over 150 other communities throughout the United States, really are. According to a recent poll of 1,619 visitors to the official website of Occupy Wall Street, here is the statistical breakdown:

While 26.7 percent of the participants are current college students, eight percent only earned high school diplomas. More than half of the respondents are employed full time, and another 20 percent work at part-time jobs. The percentage of unemployed is 13.1, just above the official national unemployment figures. With regard to the charge that this movement is the left-leaning Democrats' answer to the Tea Party, 70 percent of those surveyed identify themselves as Independents.

To put a more human face on the movement, these are some of the people who make up Occupy Wall Street:

"Lauren" is an unemployed computer programmer and mother of four who works part-time as a banquet server. Her husband “Jack” is a contractor who has had to take odd jobs as a handyman since he lost his primary employment in 2008. They lost their four-bedroom home to foreclosure two years ago and now live in a two-bedroom apartment. Until the 2000 presidential elections, she voted a straight Republican ticket, and previously volunteered as an election official.

"Bradley" is a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan who has been since been discharged from the army. He is currently seeking employment in the private sector, but has had no luck.

"Sara" is part of the one percent. She is 22 years old, and has inherited her wealth. She claims she supports Occupy Wall Street because she doesn't think it's fair that she gets a free ride because of luck, while so many others have to struggle to eat and pay their bills.

The answer to the question "Who are the people of Occupy Wall Street?" is simple. They are students, teachers, activists, parents, professionals, veterans, men and woman, black and white. They are your neighbors, your co-workers, your parents, your children, your friends. They are the face of America.

#Occupytimessquare 1 Marine vs. 30 Cops

‎"I took an Oath that I live by. I am NOT anti-NYPD. I am anti- Police Brutality. I am no longer under contract with the USMC so I do NOT have to follow military uniform regulations. I DON'T affiliate myself with ANY GROUPS or POLITICAL ORG. I affiliate myself with the AMERICAN PEOPLE that's it. I REFUSE to affiliate with anything that SEPERATES. There is an obvious problem in the country and PEACEFUL PEOPLE should be allowed to PROTEST without Brutality. I was involved in a RIOT in Rutbah, Iraq 2004 and we did NOT treat the Iraqi citizens like they are treating the unarmed civilians in our OWN Country. No one was brutalized because our mission was to "WIN the hearts and minds", why should I expect anything less in my OWN Country.

Sgt. Shamar Thomas USMC Veteran. SEMPER FI"