(RTAmerica) On Thursday the Federal Bureau of Investigation took down the website MegaUpload. MegaUpload was one of the biggest file sharing sites on the net until the crackdown which led to the arrests of seven people. But it didn’t take long for the hacktivist group Anonymous to initiate a counter-attack on several government and entertainment websites. Josh Harkinson, reporter for Mother Jones Magazine, joins us to discuss the largest attack by Anonymou
Please SHARE THIS VIDEO and spread the word about PIPA & SOPA.
Note this correction: David Sohn from the Center for Democracy & Technology is incorrectly shown as David Cohn.
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Most everyone has noticed the wide swath of internet websites that have been blacked out in protest of the pending PIPA / SOPA legislation in congress, but not as many people understand exactly why those bills are such a problem.
This short documentary explores PIPA and SOPA, how the bills work, who’s behind them, and why all internet users have reason to be concerned.
The fight to prevent online censorship in the U.S. is far from over. While SOPA’s future seems increasingly bleak, PIPA has not been pulled from consideration in the senate, where it will be up for a vote later this month.
It is important to understand that PIPA has the same fundamental problems of SOPA. It is NOT a compromise bill; at this point, it is little more than a legislative strategy to abandon the SOPA branding in favor of PIPA.
Both bills contain vague language and reach too broadly, threatening free speech and innovation on the web. Both institute a private right of action for companies to block access to infringing content without due process. Both contain an immunity clause to protect these companies from legal consequence if they make mistakes. And both set the wrong global precedent by encouraging other countries to censor the internet based on their own domestic laws.
While President Obama is opposed to the DNS-blocked mechanisms proposed in the bills, the language still exists. As well, Obama has not come against the legislation itself, nor has he signaled his intention to veto the legislation if it passes. These bills don’t need to be fixed, they need to be scrapped.
Currently, PIPA or a similar bill has a real chance of passing. But you can help to stop them:
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE
Tell them you oppose PIPA, SOPA, and any other form of internet censorship.
CENSOR YOUR WEBSITE OR BLOG
And join hundreds of others like Wikipedia and Reddit in protesting these bills.
SHARE THIS VIDEO
Help spread the word that The News won’t.
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Produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviews), Erick Stoll (camera), and Liz Cambron.
Graphic design by Chase Whiteside.
Motion design by Ashley Walton (ashleywalton.com).
Music from Nicolas Jaar’s album Space is Only Noise.
THANKS TO:
David Sohn and the Center For Democracy & Technology
Chris Riley and Free Press
Ashley Walton
Steve Bognar
John Aravosis
Jay Marose
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NLM ELSEWHERE:
Facebook: http://facebook.com/newleftmedia
Twitter: http://twitter.com/newleftmedia
Tumblr: http://blog.newleftmedia.com
(AnonOps Communications) Within minutes of the site being shut down, and DOJ releasing its statement, Anonymous sprang into action and started taking down a ton of sites — including websites for the DOJ, the US Copyright Office, Universal Music, the RIAA, the MPAA and a bunch of other sites.
Anonymous launches largest attack ever, crippling government and music industry sites. Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.
Many members of Congress have just changed their stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, the raid on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a blow to the Web.
Source: http://anonops.blogspot.com/2012/01/internet-strikes-back-opmegaupload.html
(rt.com) The “knowledge blackout” is aimed at protecting the Internet – and the website’s very existence – from online censorship, which many are equating to a complete disregard of due process.
The blackout of one of the world’s most-visited websites is meant to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two controversial anti-piracy bills currently on the table in the US Congress. Lawmakers argue the bills will protect copyrighted material, but many, including http://www.demandprogress.org founder and executive director Aaron Swartz, believe it will change the rules for the Internet not just in the United States, but around the world.
“Under this bill, the rules totally change,” Swartz told RT. “It makes everyone who runs a website into a policeman. And if they don’t do their job of making sure nobody on their site uses it for anything that’s even potentially illegal, the entire site could get shut down – without even so much as a trial.”
Read more: https://rt.com/news/sopa-pipa-protest-internet-029/
Instructions: http://pastebin.com/gnU74Trx
Video for mirroring: http://www.sendspace.com/file/tothk4
On January 5th at 12:00 PM EST BEGIN THE ATTACK MESSAGEJust copy the message and paste it into the comments of trending videos.
On Youtube:
All Changes on the attack message will be blocked by Youtube. Be creative and write a text like that:
“Search the Video OpBlackout – Stop SOPA – YOUTUBESTORM and watch it. You will help to stop
America´s first Internet Censorship system”
But don´t copy and paste it, if you copy and paste it, it will be blocked again by Youtube.On Twitter:
[#OpBlackout will not be silenced. We, #Anonymous, shall prevail! Help to stop #SOPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1PeuX-gXp4 #(TRENDING_HASHTAG)]TRANSCRIPT :
Fellow citizens of the world. We are Anonymous. We are you and you are us. The day we all feared has unfortunately arrived. United States is censoring the internet. Martin Luther King said ” Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” . Operation Blackout humbly asks you to protest against the social injustices of 2011. Around the world governments are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. We must declare our virtual selves immune to the tyrannies they are trying to impose on us! Our Cyberspace has no elected government nor it is likely to have one. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You, world leaders, have neither solicited nor received ours, we did not invite you, you do not know us, you do not know what are we capable off, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. We will spread across the planet so no one can arrest our thoughts.We will show you some examples how SOPA could affect you. Right now you can still watch your favourite videos. After sopa becomes applicable, exactly these videos might disappear. Just like they never existed. Even youtube or similar websites could be banned. Websites could be taken from googles search index. And images could disappear.
We have to fight back! There are a few ways to do that. Visit the link in the discription and follow the instructions. Sign all these petitions. Download the flyer and spread it. Blackout your avatarpicture on Facebook, Twitter or any other networks. Find your Representative and contact him/her and tell him/her what you think about SOPA. Don´t wait that others do these things for you, it is your responsibility. It is time to act. We let the people debate on a bill that would affect the internet worldwide but these people are not even able to use a keyboard. The Stop Online Piracy Act will not solve the piracy problem.
We are calling on all occupiers, all freethinking individuals, culture jammers, freaks and anarchists to stand with us on January 5th 2012. At precisely 12:00 PM EST begin the ATTACK MESSAGE and STORM Youtube and Twitter using the message from the description, we will repeat the same message over and over in a multitude of voices. Create as many Youtube and Twitter accounts as possible. Download and upload this video as a video response on all top videos on youtube. Post the link of this video to the comments on as many as possible trending Youtube Videos, you can find the exact wording in the description. Thumbs up the comments of your fellow anons. January 5th it is your day to ACT! United as One. Divided by Zero . Together We will STOP SOPA once and for all! We are Anonymous .
We do not forget Censorship.
We do not forgive the denial of our basic rights.
We are Legion.
Expect us!
(TheYoungTurks) Wikipedia no longer wants to be hosted by GoDaddy.com because the domain registrar has showed support for the Stop Online Piracy Act which Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales opposes. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks.
NOTE: TYT was briefly sponsored by GoDaddy.com long before this news broke. While TYT is no longer sponsored by Godaddy some ads are hard-wired at the start of a small number of old YouTube videos.
More on this topic: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/26/wikipedia-godaddy-sopa_n_1170034.html
@ggregator 