Politics

An interesting point I noted in a smear piece in the Telegraph. It's kind of an own goal, but I agree with it. This is a smear piece written by some arsehole masquerading as a journalist in what they call a newspaper. This isn't about whether you agree or not with Dawkins. One line is: "There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity."

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.

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.

On 5Live this morning, there was a debate about whether a tweet by Labour MP Diane Abbott is racist or not. Some people have spotted the real issue behind this comment, while others seem to have focussed on the surface meaning. Before we begin, let's look at her words "White people love playing "divide & rule" We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism".

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.