[Haskell-cafe] black Wikipedia

[Ketil Malde]

John Meacham <john at repetae.net> writes:

> now, you might say we can just move hackage out of the US

This might actually make things worse. The President's office is against
hurting US industry, and wants it to be mainly used to attack foreign
sites.  They will not only order takedowns, but use DNS and ICANN to
enforce this policy.

> Not only that, but the proponents are not just hollywood, it is anyone
> that feels they will have an advantage with the ability to bully
> internet sites. For instance, monster cable

The scientology "church".  Politicians.  Apparently, Bush considered
bombing Al Jazeera, you can imagine how long it would take before it got
blocked for "copyright violations".

The problem is bigger than just free speech (as if that isn't big
enough) - it's yet another presumed guilty, preemptive strike law.
Patents are similar, even if you do nothing wrong, heavyweights
(e.g. Google) can extort smaller players (e.g. me) by simply threatening
to sue.  Even if they have no chance to win, I simply cannot afford to
play, so I have no option except to comply with their demands.  SOPA is
just the latest and most blatant in the series, trying to secure the
entertainment industry the same power over the Internet.

That the American Congress is working so hard to place this kind of
power in the hands of a relatively small industry -- well, we can all
draw our own conclusions.

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants