Wikipedia's got our back!

Reggie · Bastard Joined: 11 Nov 2011 Posts: 953 Location: MinnySOta

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

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Don · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:18 am Post subject:

SOPA will likely be defeated as there is strong opposition to it. But ultimately most of it will pass. The corporations support it and corporations control America. All they have to do is append parts of it to other bills that people want or need. Stuff that would make a candidate look bad if he was running for re-election and his opponent said he had voted against.

A lot of this anti-piracy stuff seems to be pushed by Hollywwod and the MPAA more than the record companies. I think the music industry has figured out ways to settle for what comes from iTunes and Spotify and other digital sources. But you don't see any movie equivalents of Radiohead. Nobody's giving their movie away for free or name-your-own-price. Despite what George Clooney and other politically-correct movie stars would have you believe, they aren't going to give up their 45 room mansions just because you can't afford to buy popcorn after paying $30 for tickets for you and your girl. Brad Pitt isn't mounting a 3 month tour of America to promote his latest album, he's going to posh film festivals in Vail and Monte Carlo.

So they'll get this anti-piracy deal passed one way or another when people get bored and move on to the next trendy cause. What's important about SOPA is that it's a trial run that shows folks how to organize when they start trying to monitor all of your internet traffic for "terrorist" activities, prohibit disk encryption and restrict the amount of bandwidth you can use.
Once the government and corporations find a way into your machine they can see how much money you really have and where it's going. They can see what you read and what shows you watch. They can monitor your conversations because most will be done through email, twitter and the like. They can pinpoint where you are and read your schedule for where you're going next. Computers can do some great things but they open your entire life up to someone who has a key to the back door.

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Reggie · Bastard Joined: 11 Nov 2011 Posts: 953 Location: MinnySOta

Pretty damn creepy, huh?

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Raising mediocrity to new heights.

La Piazza Gancio · Grump Joined: 26 Nov 2011 Posts: 151 Location: Chicago

My big (and hopeless) concern about computers was that we were putting all our eggs in one basket. Diversity, which acts as a kind of fail-safe, is nature's preferred model for a good reason.

As we increasingly live our lives through our computers, it makes it irresistable for a government to succumb to the snoop impulse. And trust me, they will.

I'm glad I'm an old fart.

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sd10521 · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:31 pm Post subject:

I'm sure they have been monitoring and recording your cell phone calls for the last two decades.

Google saves the information on all of your searches for five years.

I'm a little more scared of Google than big brother. Google is creepy and smart, out government is inept and bumbling, (unless they are killing Kennedys, that they are pretty good at).

Don · Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:54 am Post subject:

I have, but rarely use a cell phone. It's not a smart one.

I also distrust Google, though they profess to "do no harm". One thing that's heightened my suspicion is that over the course of two months, several of my accounts were locked for "suspicious activity". One only receives any spam. Most are only used for incoming mail, and one was less than a month old and had never been used.

For about three weeks, they had been pestering me for a phone number for "security purposes" and "your own safety". I had never entered one and kept skipping over the message. I had given them alternate email addresses for contacting me, and "safewords" to verify that I am who I say.

Not longer afterward, the accounts would be locked, and could only be unlocked if I give them a phone number. It took ages to even find a screen that allowed me to enter my "safeword". Once I did, it immediately asked for a phone number and would go no further. I wrote their Help forum and they said to just cave in and give them the number. It was "for your safety", just in case the account had been hijacked. But they would accept ANY phone number, and once they had texted the secret code to that number, the accounts were unlocked. To my point of view, that was less secure. Anybody could provide a phone number, and temporary phones are easy to acquire. I didn't feel like laying out $40 for a temporary phone just to get back into my account, so I gave them the real number.

I've tried other supposedly safe search engines, but Google is so much better that the others aren't worth the effort. Google wants to be my TV, phone, search engine, photo repository, office suite, social network and everything else. And they take all that information they've gathered from those services and sell it to marketers.

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sd10521 · Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:31 pm Post subject:

I guess I'm outta luck if that happens to my g-mail account. I have a cell phone but texting is disabled on the thing, I'm not a fourteen year old girl, ya know...

And it's not just Google collecting information on your activities.

Don · Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:37 pm Post subject:

I have to question how hard Google will fight against restricting the web. They started a music service a few months ago and they plan to launch Google TV. The movie & music industries are in the forefront of anti-piracy legislation and Google needs support from both to sustain their business plans.

People will fight hard to defend their village the first time. With repeated attacks a few less people rise to the occasion until finally the siege is successful. The fight against SOPA is trendy today, people will get bored after the 4th or5th attempt and it will eventually pass easily with few changes.

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La Piazza Gancio · Grump Joined: 26 Nov 2011 Posts: 151 Location: Chicago

BarrieB · Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:48 am Post subject:

I use a (non-smart) cell phone all the time even though I know I can be located to within a few metres.

I keep getting the we need your phone number for security message but haven't given a number, some accounts don't even have an alternative e-mail address.

Anything\one that I don't trust fully gets an e-mail address that I can drop without pain.

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Don · Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 2:28 pm Post subject:

I had been wondering why, after all their indignant proclamation, Wikipedia was NOT shut down yesterday and neither were several other sites. Turns out that if you had javascript turned off (and I do), everything was status quo.

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Green is the only color that cannot be exposed to light.

sd10521 · Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:02 pm Post subject:

Wiki worked just fine with the java script.

You just hit the refresh button then the stop button before the script loaded.

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