Law

The day after SOPA would have passed into US law, we saw the US government initiate a worldwide takedown of MegaUpload. As many pointed out, if they could do this anyway, why do they need SOPA. Another thought occurred to me; they wanted to make it legal and create a climate of fear. MegaUpload was supposed to be a trophy show takedown under these new laws.

Every week there are new stories cropping up somewhere on the planet of copyright holders clamping down in some way how people can use their work, or in most cases can't use their work. News organisations are among them. I've noticed something odd here. Well, I say "odd", it's just the usual hypocrisy at work.

So eagle eyed readers will have noticed some sites had a "stop SOPA" campaign of some sorts, some (like mine) went black for the day to protest it. Most of the techie sites who protested are niche sites. They may be huge well known names within that niche, but the average Joe will never stumble across them. The big changer for the blackout was Wikipedia.

Most techy people are aware of SOPA and it's implications. Some have different ways of trying to kill the legislation and expose the numbers behind the support. A few large names have done things like publicly leave GoDaddy because of GoDaddy's support for internet censorship. Other sites like Amazon, Yahoo and Google are talking about going blank for a day with a message to visitors to contact their Senators.

When I read the "for dummies" publisher is shaking down torrent downloaders for money to "educate them" it occurred to me that there's a niche that needs filled; namely a "File Sharing For Dummies" but filled with useful info that will piss these shakedown companies off, and released under a Creative Commons license.