

Mozilla urges its users to raise their voice against SOPA - Indyan
http://www.mozilla.org/sopa/

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kpozin
If only Google or Facebook would use their homepage status to get the word out
to the majority of the population. A blacked-out Google Doodle or a
notification at the top of the Facebook newsfeed would go a very long way.

~~~
iamandrus
Unfortunately I doubt Facebook will even mention the SOPA law. Google might
put a small piece of text on the bottom of the home page about it, but even
then that's a big "maybe."

~~~
ticks
I don't think Google should politicise its homepage, same goes for Facebook.
Once you start opening the floodgates, you start to polarise your service to
political persuasions.

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Indyan
Mozilla is rotating this call to action on its browser homepage (about:home),
which is heavily trafficked.

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zerostar07
Coincidentally, "Sopa" in Greek means "Silence!" [or "shut up!"]

~~~
rbanffy
In Portuguese, it's "soup", which also is a somewhat archaic slang for
something that's very easy.

~~~
yesbabyyes
In Swedish, it's "piece of garbage".

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subpixel
To explain this to friends & family, tell them to watch this video:
<http://vimeo.com/31100268> \- or just the part from 1:08-2:31

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law
For all those who are interested,
<http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_11162011.html> is the link to the
hearing's webcast, which began at 10 a.m. EST.

~~~
gabaix
Just watched for 30min. It looks they all agree the Internet needs to be
controlled.

~~~
ktsmith
They who? Congress? If that's the case I'm not terribly surprised.

I haven't been able to get the stream to start all morning.

~~~
law
The House Judiciary committee. It hasn't been voted on yet.

~~~
sukuriant
When is it to be voted on?

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rcthompson
If someone asks you what SOPA stands for, you can tell them it's the "Stop
Online Privacy Act".

It's only a Hamming distance of 3 from the real name.

~~~
fwenzel
Do you mean Levenshtein distance :)

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VladRussian
the more government oppression applied to the Internet - the sooner a
government oppressure resistant alternative would emerge. The current Internet
is a great thing, yet it is fundamentally flawed by being that vulnerable to
any whimse of concentrated political and economical interest.

While it can't be presicely described how the future free Internet would look,
it is possble to imagine some modern implementation of something like the old
Fido network with a set of satellites and cables/floats in the international
space and waters and the next generation WiFi that will have on the scale of
couple orders of magnitude greater range.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Decentralization.

Imagine something like a mashup between bittorrent, usenet, and TOR (store &
forward + P2P) integrated into a web browser client front-end.

This sort of thing has been on my mind for years now, but it never occurred to
me that it could actually be a necessary invention for maintaining a free and
open internet in the developed world.

~~~
sp332
Check out this project: <https://freenetproject.org/>

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scubaguy
I can't wait for someone to post a link to the Pirate Bay in the comments,
thereby providing legal justification for taking down sites that criticize
SOPA.

~~~
fwenzel
whitehouse.gov needs a comment function.

~~~
vidarh
Create a petition.

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sabret00the
I wish they would've done the same thing for the Digital Economy Bill in the
UK.

~~~
sycren
yeah we only had 20,000 letters sent in by consumer groups and a huge twitter
campaign #debill.

All that meant was a discussion where the MP in charge of the bill thought
that the IP address meant Intellectual Property address and all of Labour
turning up for 5 mins to vote it through before the general election..

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silentific
[https://supporters.eff.org/thanks/thank-you-opposing-
interne...](https://supporters.eff.org/thanks/thank-you-opposing-internet-
blacklist-bill)

"The service is not available. Please try again later."

:/

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mrchess
Is it too late to do any sort of petition since the hearing is today?

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kumar303
No. The congressional hearing only just started, no voting yet. Now is a good
time to call your US rep (if you live in the US)
<http://www.contactingthecongress.org/> . I was surprised that several of my
IL reps did not have a stance on the issue! Calling is better than emailing. I
know, it's a backwards system.

~~~
mseebach
> several of my IL reps

Is that a Chicago politics thing?

~~~
TillE
Two Senators, one Congressman. If you live in one of the 50 states, you have
three federal lawmakers who represent you.

If you have multiple residences or an office in another district, you might
have more relevant congresscritters who you'd want to call, even if you can't
directly vote for them.

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NanoWar
Are there online petitions in the US?

~~~
jen_h
If you're in the US, contact your representatives.

Email from EFF's site:

[http://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?a...](http://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173)

Email from OpenCongress:

[http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/new?bil...](http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/new?bill=112-h3261&position=oppose)

Snailmail from SendWrite:

<https://sendwrite.com/sopa/>

Petition from DemandProgress:

<http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/pipa_house/>

And there's good, old-fashioned phone calls:
<http://www.contactingthecongress.org/>

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yuioooo
adfaasdfas

