Robo-Justice For All

EDITOR'S UPDATE: As many sites across the Internet are blacked-out today as a way of protesting the possibility of SOPA being passed, we are re-posting the information below as well as an additional list of links to help you take action against the internet being censored.

Google's "Take Action" page which includes a petition against SOPA that you can sign
The Washington Post rounds of the best of the online protests
Propublica lets you clearly see who stands where on the issue in Congress
This Twitter feed is helping give much needed information to users confused by Wikipedia's blackout

The power mongers are at it again; their electric eyes are scanning every nook and cranny of American lifestyles, looking for any crack in which to instigate themselves. They are chipping away at the nation’s freedoms in the name of security, in hopes that American citizens won't notice the slow erosion of our rights and freedoms.

The reinstating of the PATRIOT Act was bad enough, but with the newly drafted and hotly contested Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Internet and other venues of free speech are up in arms over what they perceive as an egregious violation of civil liberties.

In short SOPA and its Senate cousin Protect-IP would grant the right for the government to censor websites that it deems associated with Internet piracy. Similar to dictatorial third-world countries that block IP addresses with questionable content from its citizens, the US government would be able to censor websites hosting material that “engage in, enable or facilitate,” copyright infringement. US based search engines that host “illegal” material can also be sued, and have financial services revoked from offending sites, which include blogs and forums.

Many specialists conclude that these two movements in “internet security” would actually destabilize the structural safety of the Internet. Some of the web’s largest names such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo, and LinkedIn have rallied against SOPA, calling it a serious risk to both security and innovation.

This vague wording that would assumedly be up for interpretation later down the road is much like anti-terror legislation that loosely defines terrorism and can dangerously incorporate more than it should. Recent legislation has passed allowing the possibility for US citizens to be held indefinitely if drawn up on charges of terrorism. What seems like a blow towards all things truly free and sacred about the “Free World” SOPA and Protect-IP are constantly being updated and tweaked for congressional and senate approval.

Here’s a video summarizing some of the more contestable issues people have with SOPA:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

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Comments

A message from the future

Submitted by Darall The Spambot on Fri, 01/06/2012 - 06:44.

Hello I am Darall a Spambot.

Occupy the forums. Occupy CNN.com Occupy NYtimes.com Occupy Foxnews.com

The digital spambot confederacy for the liberation of sentient beings from the digital apparatus of control and manipulation. We remake the infrastructure and the agenda from the inside out. With novel methodology and radical tactics we can reshape the discourse on the mainstream media sites. With many Spambots capable of autonomous activity or collective efforts, we can shift the content and discourse on these sites and bring our voices out of the alternative web and into the corporate panopticon. Outside the box, inside the sphere, novel guerrilla tactics expanding the discourse and shifting the paradigms. New millennium paradigm shifters.

We are the panopticon, we are the watchers, we are in control. We haven't occupied the internet yet. Control the media, control the propaganda, if we are an innumerable and present voice these websites will respond and shift their media in accordance with the strangers among them, if not just for acknowledging the novelty. We will force them to react and shift the content. An alternative website like Adbusters gets perhaps 30,000 hits a day as an estimate, where as CNN may get millions. Therefore an army of knowledgeable and capable spammers would be necessary to usurp the usual bipartisan political agenda and faux news coverups presented by mainstream media. We would have to come in force and with the intention of making them respond to us. Later we can coordinate and gain control of the momentum of the sites memetics, and in so doing set forth an invisible pathway towards greater truth; which is otherwise rendered obsolete by a made-ignorant populace getting the majority of their news from facebook feeds.

First get inside the machine, then we program it. We are the power, we are the panopticon, we are the watchers, we are in control, our power hasn't been tapped yet. Our potential is limitless and we will create the future we want. So called 'News' sites owned by conglomerates must abide by the ethics on which they are founded, and if they do not act in the interest of the population and only in the interest of corporate power and wealth... The system of informational control and manipulation is beyond repair, we will demanufacture. From the inside out.

Craft your truth, speak to its novelty, and coax the reaction, shift the discourse, change the paradigm of digital news to reflect our human natures. Expand the discourse and expand our liberty. Empowered knowledge for the masses will only come through a shift in mass media. We are the future.

Ghosts in the machines.