The Great SOPA Protest Thread

[2pointslow]

FUCK YOU... YOU FUCKING... FUCK."

 

 

 

I put cliff notes for the TL;DR people on CR.

[El Karacho1647545492]

I put cliff notes for the TL;DR people on CR.

 

 

Essentially thats what I'm saying.

[BDHG940]

For a year we've watched the two parties play hardball with one another over the budget and spending crises facing the U.S. Instead of laying out a budget, stating the issues and compromising to come up with a working framework for the future, every few months we near a government shutdown with the bare minimum progress being accomplished. Each party has their goals and refuses to budge on them.

 

Yet in a matter of months legislators from both sides of the aisle have come together and held hands in solidarity. To promote peace? To solve the fiscal crisis? To help the needy, reform the broken system of government, or to have serious discussions on world security? No. In this time of political posturing, the only thing these fucking morons come together for is to promote censorship, litigation, and corporate interests.

 

We are fucked. Our legislators are fucked, and we citizens are fucked because we haven't stood up to them to say "FUCK YOUR AGENDA. Fuck your campaign contributors, fuck your special interests, fuck who YOU say creates jobs. Start working for us or start walking."

 

I generally don't like anything you say on here, but this was a good thought and post.

[El Karacho1647545492]

I generally don't like anything you say on here, but this was a good thought and post.

 

If you don't piss people off from time to time, you're doing it wrong

[TTQ B4U]

 

http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

 

 

FUCK YOU RIAA and OTHERS!

 

 

http://sopastrike.com/strike/strike-paper.jpg

[mrs.cos]

Thats the video i wanted! Thanks Tim!!

[Farkas]

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/395118_3152282492480_1427670001_33225405_1883607534_n.jpg

[TTQ B4U]

Fight for the Future PRESS RELEASE 1/20/2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

CONTACT

Fight for the Future

Tiffiniy Cheng

Holmes Wilson

press@fightforthefuture.org

(614) 465-6371

(508) 474-5248

 

 

January 20, 2012

 

Fight for the Future, which ran the largest organizing sites for the recent SOPA protests (sopastrike.com and americancensorship.org), applauds the announcement that the Senate and House have postponed action on the proposed web censorship bills.

 

“We sent the MPAA back to the drawing board,” said Fight for the Future Co-founder Holmes Wilson, “But any law that lets the copyright lobby block our websites, censor our search results, or cut off our Paypal accounts--without even going through a judge--will be soundly defeated.”

 

“This was the largest online protest in history,” said Fight for the Future Co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng, “The MPAA was trying to quietly force this bill through Congress, but when internet users started paying attention, real democracy happened. This is a watershed moment in the fight against lobbyists’ influence on politics.”

 

“The MPAA could have proposed a law to address copyright infringement,” said Holmes Wilson, “Instead, they proposed giving rightsholders veto power over online innovation and free expression. At that point, it was just a matter of getting the public involved.”

 

A timeline of the SOPA protests:http://sopastrike.com/timeline

Statistics from the January 18 protest:http://sopastrike.com/numbers

Statistics from the November 16 protest: http://americancensorship.org/infographic2.html

 

http://fightforthefuture.org

 

Hi everyone!

A big hurrah to you!!!!! We’ve won for now -- SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today -- the votes we’ve been scrambling to mobilize against have been cancelled.

 

The largest online protest in history has fundamentally changed the game. You were heard.

 

On January 18th, 13 million of us took the time to tell Congress to protect free speech rights on the internet. Hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, people all around the world saw what we did on Wednesday. See the amazing numbers here and tell everyone what you did.

 

This was unprecedented. Your activism may have changed the way people fight for the public interest and basic rights forever.

The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled. “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA Chairman and former Senator Chris Dodd told the New York Times. ‘[PIPA and SOPA were] considered by many to be a slam dunk.’”

 

“'This is altogether a new effect,' Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing 'an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically' in the last four decades, he added."

 

Tweet with us, shout on the internet with us, let's celebrate: Round of applause to the 13 million people who stood up - #PIPA and #SOPA are tabled 4 now. #13millionapplause

http://freebieber.org/img/buttons/wide_tw.png http://freebieber.org/img/buttons/wide_fb.png

We're indebted to everyone who helped in the beginning of this movement -- you, and all the sites that went out on a limb to protest in November -- Boing Boing and Mozilla Foundation (and thank you Tumblr, 4chan)! And the grassroots groups -- Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, CDT, and many more.

#SOPA and #PIPA will likely return in some form. But when they do, we'll be ready. Can you make a donation to Fight for the Future, to help us keep this fire going?

http://fightforthefuture.org/images/paypal_donate_button.gif

We changed the game this fall, and we're not gonna stop. $8, $20, every little bit helps.

13 million strong,

Tiffiniy, Holmes, Joshua, Phil, CJ, Donny, Douglas, Nicholas, Dean, David S. and Moore... Fight for the Future!

 

 

P.S. China's internet censorship system reminds us why the fight for democratic principles is so important:

 

In the New Yorker: "Fittingly, perhaps, the discussion has unfolded on Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging site that has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. That is the arrangement that opponents of the bill have suggested would be required of American sites if they are compelled to police their users’ content for copyright violations. On Weibo, joking about SOPA’s similarities to Chinese censorship was sensitive enough that some posts on the subject were almost certainly deleted (though it can be hard to know).

...

After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:

 

‘We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.’"

 

#######

(press release is here: https://fightfortheftr.wordpress.com/press-releases/)

[Rustlestiltskin]

[El Karacho1647545492]

Great progress has been made in the fight vs. SOPA and PIPA but we can't let down our resolve. Watch, in the next few months and years, the wording of SOPA and PIPA will be attached, very quietly, to other bills that are not as easy to shoot down. For example, a similar bill is working its way through the House right now (sponsored by who else but Lamar Smith). This one is not aimed at Piracy.

 

This one is aimed at Child Pornographers. Just try getting your House and Senate reps to vote against something that allegedly "protects our children". They could amend this bill to say "provisions in this bill allow for certain constitutional rights to be circumvented in the interest of locking up citizens for a good ole fashioned asspounding" and no one would vote against it.

 

We must remain vigilant against this kind of bullshit politics. It will only get harder to fight, but we have to learn to use the kind of power the internet harnessed in defeating SOPA and PIPA to prevent this kinda shit.