CommentsDisplaying TeriPettit's 10 most recent comments.

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 5:39pm

  In reply to lisa2994.

  Lisa, there are about 5 million edits made to Wikipedia per month, which works out to about 167 thousand per day.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics

  And it’s free, and doesn’t even take advertising (unlike Facebook, etc.)

  How in the world do you expect that much content to be policed for errors BEFORE it goes online?

  All the editing is by unpaid volunteers. There are about 300,000 people who edit it regularly, defined as once per month or more. And some of them act as volunteer “spam police”, looking for hoax edits like that. But it takes a while to catch the errors, and in the interim, sometimes they fool somebody.

  Hoaxes can be posted anywhere. Someone could post a hoax right here in this blog. The smart thing to do with ANYTHING you read online, whether Wikipedia or elsewhere, no matter how much you trust the source, is to Google (or use another search engine) to see what else has been said about the same topic. If it’s a hoax or an urban legend, or a controversial subject matter (such as these bills), someone else will have done a fact check or presented another side of the story.

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 4:38pm

  In reply to john9300.

  I suspect that nearly everyone posting here against the bills has already written to their Senators, Congressional Representative, and the White House.

  Here is one place to send a message from, for anyone who hasn’t done so yet:
  http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 4:30pm

  In reply to Texas Lady Juanita.

  While citing Wikipedia itself isn’t good practice, its articles usually include links to references such as books, news organizations, research groups, government and industry sites, etc., which can then be followed. It can be a much more efficient way than Google to find relevant material.

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 4:15pm

  In reply to faircloth.

  Considering which industries have been pushing for these bills for years, it is unlikely that is the INTENT.

  Supporters include:
  RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Disney, Marvel, NFL, MCA Records, Universal, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, US Chamber of Commerce, etc.

  Not organizations likely to be seeking a general purpose “kill switch”.

  That doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t some danger of the MECHANISMS that would be developed someday being used that way.

  The bills require internet search engines like Google, internet advertising placement engines like WebMetro, and any site that accepts links (like this very blog!) to put in place procedures that will filter out all links to a set of blacklisted offshore piracy sites.

  The actual bills are very clear in the criteria for what it would take to count as a piracy site. But once the internet has ubiquitous mechanisms for isolating web sites, there is a danger of those mechanisms being redirected to a broader purpose.

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 3:58pm

  Some links:

  Open Congress:
  http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/money

  Electronic Frontier Foundation:
  https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill

  Zoe Lofgren’s blog (has lots of good links):
  http://lofgren.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=674

  PJ Media Analysis:
  http://pjmedia.com/blog/sopa-and-protect-ip-a-line-by-line-analysis-of-the-bills-we-must-kill/

  Darrel Issa’s alternative approach (OPEN act):
  http://www.keepthewebopen.com/

  Issa opposes SOPA and PIPA. I have not studied his OPEN act well enough to see if it shares the problems that SOPA and PIPA have.

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 3:46pm

  H.R. 3261 SOPA, Sponsor Lamar Smith (R-TX)

  Co-sponsors:
  Dem:
  Joe Baca [CA-43], John Barrow [GA-12], Karen Bass [CA-33], Howard Berman [CA-28], Judy Chu [CA-32], ohn Conyers [MI-14], Jim Cooper [TN-5], Ted Deutch [FL-19], Tim Holden [PA-17], John Larson [CT-1], Ben Luján [NM-3], William Owens [NY-23], Adam Schiff [CA-29], Brad Sherman [CA-27], Debbie Wasserman Schultz [FL-20], Melvin Watt [NC-12]

  Rep:
  Mark Amodei [NV-2], Marsha Blackburn [TN-7], Mary Bono Mack [CA-45], John Carter [TX-31], Steven Chabot [OH-1], Elton Gallegly [CA-24], Robert Goodlatte [VA-6], Tim Griffin [AR-2], Peter King [NY-3], Thomas Marino [PA-10], Alan Nunnelee [MS-1], Ben Quayle [AZ-3], Dennis Ross [FL-12], Steve Scalise [LA-1], Lee Terry [NE-2]

  OPPONENTS:

  John Campbell (R-CA)
  Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
  Mike Doyle (D-PA)
  Anna Eshoo (D-CA)
  Mike Honda (D-CA)
  Darrell Issa (R-CA)
  Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
  Doris Matsui (D-CA)
  George Miller (D-CA)
  Ron Paul (R-KY)
  Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
  Jared Polis (D-CO)
  Mike Thompson (D-CA)
  Ron Wyden (D-OR)

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 3:45pm

  S. 968 (PIPA), Sponsor Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

  Co-sponsors:
  Dem:
  Al Franken [MN], Amy Klobuchar [MN], Barbara Boxer [CA], Benjamin Cardin [MD], Bill Nelson [FL], Charles Schumer [NY], Chris Coons [DE], Dianne Feinstein [CA], Herbert Kohl [WI], Jeanne Shaheen [NH], Jeff Bingaman [NM], Kay Hagan [NC], Kirsten Gillibrand [NY], Mary Landrieu [LA], Michael Bennet [CO], MRichard Blumenthal [CT], Richard Durbin [IL], Robert Casey [PA], Robert Menéndez [NJ], Sheldon Whitehouse [RI], Sherrod Brown [OH], Tim Johnson [SD], Tom Udall [NM]

  Rep:
  Kelly Ayotte [NH], Jerry Moran [KS], John Boozman [AR], John Isakson [GA], John McCain [AZ], Bob Corker [TN], Charles Grassley [IA], James Risch [ID], Lamar Alexander [TN], Lindsey Graham [SC], Marco Rubio [FL], David Vitter [LA], ichael Enzi [WY], Orrin Hatch [UT], Roy Blunt [MO], Saxby Chambliss [GA], Thad Cochran [MS]

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 3:43pm

  In reply to mauijonny.

  Thanks for the list, Maui Johnny. It shows that the support and the opposition are both bipartisan:

  Here are some more:

  Support:
  Disney, Random House, Macmillan, Comcast, Marvel, MCA Records, Universal, NFL, AFL-CIO, US Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau

  Oppose:
  Microsoft, Sandia Labs, Cato Institute, Demand Progress, Creative Commons, Daily Kos, MoveOn, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Freedom House, Redstate, Tea Party Patriots, OpenCongress, FireDogLake, PJ Media

  Congressional Opponents:

  John Campbell (R-CA)
  Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
  Mike Doyle (D-PA)
  Anna Eshoo (D-CA)
  Mike Honda (D-CA)
  Darrell Issa (R-CA)
  Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
  Doris Matsui (D-CA)
  George Miller (D-CA)
  Ron Paul (R-KY)
  Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
  Jared Polis (D-CO)
  Mike Thompson (D-CA)
  Ron Wyden (D-OR)

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 3:37pm

  In reply to Tyler520.

  Here is the text of the letter that I sent to my representatives:

  My job is a software developer. I’ve been employed by Adobe for 24 years, am a co-inventor on 7 software patents, and in 1978-1986 was one of the developers of the Xerox Star, the system that introduced the graphical desktop metaphor to computing. So I understand very well the costs of software piracy to industry.

  But the PIPA and SOPA bills are NOT the way to fight piracy or copyright infringement!! These bills risk allowing the government to fine or shut down web sites like Facebook, YouTube and blogging hosts if they do not adequately filter out links to the pirate sites. Identifying and filtering all links is too difficult for any public access site to enforce, places them at risk of expensive litigation, and could easily lead to reducing freedom of speech. Public upload sites on the internet are our only truly free speech forum, where it doesn’t cost big bucks and licenses for anyone to reach the public ear. Public access sites MUST remain unfettered and unconstrained to have a free democracy!

  Piracy is a real cost, but it must be addressed in a dual prong way, by combining technology that makes it harder for copied works to run or play, with better tools for identifying and prosecuting the profiteers. Placing an enforcement burden on providers of internet services to isolate the pirate sites is not the answer.

• Wikipedia Will Officially Blackout in Protest of Anti-Piracy Act This Wednesday

  January 17, 2012 at 3:34pm

  In reply to Tyler520.

  Look, I do oppose these bills, I’m just saying that it is better to oppose them based on what they really say. Does this site allow links? If so, I’ll link to the text of the bills on OpenCongress.

  I agree the bills present a danger to user content sites, but it is because those sites might accidentally LINK TO the blacklisted pirate sites, not because they might themselves be blacklisted. There are only 20 sites that fit the definition, and they are all offshore.