Entertainment For Lively Minds
Wikipedia blacked out today
Posted by mojoworking on 18 January 2012 - 8:27am.
The English language version of Wikipedia is blacked out today (Jan 18) in protest against proposed legislation:
"the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia"
Anyone know anything about this?
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout
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One thing's for sure
We can't look it up on Wikipedia! Till tomorrow anyway.
Use the German version
And auto-translate.
Half the journalists
in the English speaking world will be up shit creek today.
Many of the writers I've worked with rely on Wiki totally.
Here's
what seems a reasonably well-balanced report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585
I listened to a discussion about this on the wireless last night and my takeaway was that the objectives of the bill (basically to try to stop copyright and IP theft) were fine but the legislation has been badly written and, as written, could be applied very broadly and result in either abuse or draconian action.
And as ever with the US, their legislation says "Whoever you are and wherever you are in the world, we will make our legislation apply to you." So (and ironically I'm resorting to very broad terms myself now) if you operate a web site from a UK business but it's accessed by Americans or by people in America, you could come under its provisions and you'd have to go to court in the US if someone objected to what you were doing on the site.
Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?
Basically SOPA and PIPA, which Wikipedia is objecting to, will call for the removal of websites advertising links to unauthorised or copyrighted material throughout the world. So they might well impact on UK based sites, including this one, if allowed to. Only the 'big boys' like Google (who own YouTube) will be capable of defending themselves through the courts.
Instead of taking recourse to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove the content, they're going one step further and demanding the removal of websites containing the content and those linking to them too.
Interesting times ahead? YouTube for example could be unrecognisable if the changes take place.
There's so many grey areas
We might be a UK company, but our server is in Pittsburgh. And we don't host any copyrighted material ourselves - we merely allow our readers to embed HTML that will display such material hosted on other sites, like YouTube.
Ah....
Interesting choice - why not a UK-based hosting service, Fraser? I've always been led to believe that (where possible) it's best to host in or near the country of majority user demographic. Reduced pings and hops spring to mind.
Just curious.
The answer is obvious
as Chuck Berry told us in Sweet Little Sixteen:
They're really rockin' in Boston, In Pittsburgh, Pa....
Partly cost - UK hosting charges tend to be higher
But mainly because I've used the company we chose for well over a decade and they've never been anything less than superb. They were originally recommended to me by the guy who coded Flickr, and he was UK-based at the time.
If you look something up on Wikipedia...
... and press escape as soon as you reach the page, you should be able to view it without it being blocked by the anti-SOPA message page. Handy if you need to check stuff today. Also, Wiki still appears to be working for iOS and Android.
Ot use the mobile version
Change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
to
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Or search for it with Google
And open the page via the Google cache. (Although Mr Lewry's suggestion is frankly a better one.)
Just turn off Javascript
for the duration.
Note that
Wikipedia are perfectly happy for you to circumvent it, so long as you got the original message:
"Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?
Yes. During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message."
from here
PM on Radio 4
PM on BBC Radio 4 did a piece about this on yesterday's programme (here on the iPlayer: the item starts at 38:54.) The discussion is rather more heat than light, but it gives an idea of the arguments from both sides.
Even though
some of the principal contentions have been withdrawn (i.e. DNS blocking), there is a worrying presumption on the part of the US legislature that they can unilaterally apply sanction that will apply worldwide. Unfortunately, it appears that (as usual) many of the people voting on the bill haven't actually read or understood it, as is so common in many legislative chambers across the world. Also, because of the nature of distributed protocols and systems like the DNS service*, the only real danger is that services will relocate and reroute around the perceived obstruction - i.e the US. All SOPA and PIPA will really do is create a more fragmented internet, and the people who are responsible for commercial scale piracy will simply move to another mechanism.
In practice, the provisions just look like a more aggressive variant on US DMCA sanctions. And those have had mixed success in dealing with the problem. This places way too much power in the hands of the large corporate juggernauts who want to enforce intellectual property rights. While this may be fine in broad principle, the worry is that many fair uses will be trampled upon in over-zealous enforcement.
To their credit, I think the Obama administration see this in their long term thinking; they realise that piracy is an issue that needs to be addressed, but that these bills are not the way to do it and might actually be counter-productive. I think Jimmy Wales has pulled a bit of a stunt, but it's effective because it has pushed SOPA/PIPA into the view of the "average user". I wish that more services had pointed up the issue than are doing so, without necessarily resorting to a shutdown.
* which is responsible for mapping machine address records to the domain names people commonly use, if you are not aware. It's almost 30 years old now.
"WTF"
The effect the blackout's had on the teenage population attempting to do their homework has been nicely documented here -
http://flowingdata.com/2012/01/17/watching-wtf-wikipedia-as-sopapipa-bla...
- linking to a couple of visualisations of the growth of the trending phrase "wtf wikipedia" on twitter today.
And inevitably…
It's working here.
http://www.wikipedia.org/ works fine. Wha'appen?
That's the international Wikipedia homepage
It's the English language version of the site that's unavailable.
Ah, ok... Ta
It did say yesterday on wiki...
...that they hoped everyone could cope with the site being down for 25 hours.
But it seems odd that http://www.wikipedia.org/
still works. Surely that's that's the URL that most people would use anyway?
That page is still visible
It's the English language content pages that aren't. The entry page you mention is used by all nationalities.
Sky News UK
opened their coverage of the story with this classic line:
"The internet has become the go-to place for information"
Who writes this stuff?
SOPA...
...and it's counterpart in the other House, Protect IP, will, if passed in their original form, or even with The DNS elements removed allow the big media conglomerates to dictate almost as far as how the Internet actually works, and give them unprecedented power over other businesses, with no need to offer any legal proof of their alleged copyright infringements, this power handed to them on a plate by politicians who, at best, have no understanding of what effect they will be having and have, at worst, only one motivation for supporting this - money.
All of this for an industry that is outperforming all other business sectors in the US, despite apparently being "ripped apart" by online piracy, and which cannot place any actual value on their losses.
Clealy we need to limit piracy as far as is possible and offer some protection for those people who create content, but this isn't the way.
Everything you need to know about SOPA
Warning: contains goat and koala love.
http://theoatmeal.com/sopa
TED on SOPA
http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_ba...
What did we do before Wiki?
We went to the library - which, quite serendipitously, is where I am typing this right now. My laptop's hard drive failed (for the second time) on Sunday. So I missed Wiki on the 18th - as well as everything else. But you know what, the library is ace. Internet access is free - lots of newish machines, coffee is a bit ropey but the heating is free too!
Support your local library!!!