Nineteen Eleven

well after the shutdown of megaupload and the arrest of its operators, anonymous moved tonight. around 7pm Department of Justice, Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association of America, and Universal Music group (and others) All Offline... reports say that Anon is working to shutdown the FBI site next.

as of right now most of those sites are back up

http://gizmodo.com/5877679/anonymous-ki ... nge-strike

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... indictment

It's not like it matters. I mean, ya, the bill lost supporters and will probably be tabled and die. But then what? What stops them from just throwing it in as a rider to some appropriations bill for homeless orphan funding? What all this anti-sopa/pipa gnashing of teeth should have done is take support of a separate bill that enshrines the 'speech' everyone is blabbering about. I don't fault Reh for feeling less than encouraged by the 'protest'. For any internet-citizen it was basically an unofficial holiday. And that's part of the issue.

Taking down your 200-hit-a-month website to 'show solidarity' is petty and useless. To anyone who was watching it became clear the only reason it bumped into the national arena was because wikipedia backed it. ~Everybody~ uses wikipedia. But 'the internet' has been fighting against SOPA/PIPA for MONTHS and now I start seeing all these blogs and articles run victory laps and hand out their "I was there" buttons to one another. It's frustrating because i'm not against killing the bill, i am in absolute favor of that, but killing the bill is just a STEP. And if anyone is looking to take that next step it certainly hasn't crossed my radar. It's just frustrating to see so many platforms for meaningful agency and action put their blinders up after they--basically--achieved the goal of not shitting all over themselves.

And this goes to the group everyone keeps calling "anonymous" too (it's like saying the team of 'white' or the clan of 'tall', it's a description not a title). Taking down the doj.gov or riaa.com is like taking a dump in front of their office door. It might keep people from going in for a little while, but then they call the janitor and clean it up and things go back to normal. I feel like i'm going to explode because it's obvious these people want to 'make a difference' and strike against 'the man' but they have no idea how to do so and seem completely ignorant to the fact. But what more can you expect from a nameless group of ever-changing members spawned from a teen imageboard? At least lulzsec hacked shit.

In my opinion, the bottom line is this:

They want to battle file sharing, piracy, etc. The problem being is that they want to be lazy about it because the way it is enforced now is both ineffective and time consuming. There's still a major problem of hard copy piracy down on the city streets (ethically diverse individual with a table selling what you know is copied content). This was an easy out for them in terms of the "not so hard copy" section.

The patriot act james cited, along with this, and not to mention the smoking ban in buildings in Ohio, are all examples of regulation/legislation by the govt going too far. They do the whole fear mongering thing and people vote the shit in, or vote in legislators who will.

Real big shock to you, but the best thing the PATRIOT Act did was simply aggregate all the current disparate laws affecting your rights. PATRIOT Act isn't a new or novel attack on your rights, most of that stuff was law before it.

That's the scary part.

CharlieGiteau wrote:...the smoking ban in buildings in Ohio...

huh?

scorch- wrote:

CharlieGiteau wrote:...the smoking ban in buildings in Ohio...

huh?

No place of business is allowed to have smoking inside their building. Even bars are included. Designated smoking areas are outside and businesses will be fined if they receive complaints and it is proven they're allowing it to happen. It's quite crazy actually.

CharlieGiteau wrote:

scorch- wrote:

CharlieGiteau wrote:...the smoking ban in buildings in Ohio...

huh?

No place of business is allowed to have smoking inside their building. Even bars are included. Designated smoking areas are outside and businesses will be fined if they receive complaints and it is proven they're allowing it to happen. It's quite crazy actually.

Uh, it's not crazy. There is no constitutional right to smoke. Given that smoking actually causes health problems and is a physical irritant to people and the fact you equate this to some sort of constitutional right like freedom of speech pretty much epitomizes why I find libertarians and conservatives to be absolutely worthless people.

Besides, the smoking ban was a referendum created by public initiative. So, it has nothing to do with government going to far. It's like the exact opposite. 60% of Ohio residents don't want smoking inside buildings and businesses that are public or serve a public purpose.

Don't forget the additional risk of building fires associated with smoking indoors. It's bad enough that you want to try to form malignant tumors in your own body... but you want to try to do the same for other people and get upset when they tell you to stop?

scorch- wrote:Don't forget the additional risk of building fires associated with smoking indoors. It's bad enough that you want to try to form malignant tumors in your own body... but you want to try to do the same for other people and get upset when they tell you to stop?

It really does blow my mind. I don't want to smell or inhale someone else's cigarette smoke. The fact people think their "right to smoke" trumps my right not to smoke is hilarious.