ACTA is of course, not a bill like SOPA, but an international trade agreement that sets standards for the enforcement of intellectual property rights.  Unlike SOPA, the focus of ACTA is enforcement of larger-scale copyright infringements.  So while it is not a law that says who can and who can’t be defined as theives of intellectual property, it encourages those that sign it to create such laws, and crack down harder on those who break them.

Surely if the United States had signed such an agreement we would have heard about it, right?  Nope.  The United States signed ACTA on it’s day of birth, on October 1, 2011.  Citizens were not informed of this not because of some distraction such as SOPA or the Occupy Protests, but because the various governments that signed it decided it was better to keep it a secret.  It was only during the turbulence of SOPA when ACTA was exposed to the majority of the citizens of the countries who signed the agreement.  Some other governments who have also signed include Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and 22 members of the European Union.

Protests have already sprung up across the globe, with the most fierce gatherings in Europe.  This also comes to show why internet activists are still so up in arms about the copyright issues with protests such as Black March.

Below is a promotional poster spread across the internet by supporters of Black March.

They plan to achieve such a lofty goal by boycotting all copyrighted consumer goods, such as music, movies and books.  As described in the promotional image above, this will give “all governments an economic hit that can be visible”.

So is this actually possible?  Will it actually do something?  There are a couple very good arguments that say no.

First, how many people will actually give up buying copyrighted material for an entire month?  I’d like to think we all have the self-discipline to take on such a task, but unfortunately many of us don’t.

Second, won’t these companies experience a boom when this is over?  Everyone who participates will no doubt have a few things in mind to blow all that saved up money on when April comes.  This could overwrite any damage that is done.

Whatever the case, it is good to see people willing to give up some of their entertainment and consumerism to make a difference in the name of freedom.  Whether or not it does make a difference in the end, I will be participating in Black March, and I would urge the readers of this article to do the same.

Though, as stated before, if the trend of how we the citizens of the United States exercise our role in the government continues, there will be a SOPA passed. The problem with people today is they don’t care. Wikipedia, Craigslist etc. did a great job of spreading the word about SOPA; which was great. Though if people don’t put more than 2 minutes of care in, then nothing will change. It’s easy to read a small paragraph followed by clicking a link to sign a petition, anyone can do it. What we really need to do is take it to the next step. The citizens of the United States have a louder voice than it appears, and it’s called voting. These people supporting SOPA and PIPA are elected officials and big business crying over 1.6 billion in revenue apposed to 1.67 billion. We have the control over who runs our country.

If you really want to make a difference, and see SOPA and PIPA put to rest indeffinitly, you need to go out and VOTE. Otherwise these bills will continue to pop up, and one will eventually pass through congress.

I didn’t do well in the last market crash, so I look over job listings for contract work.  Yesterday I saw a posting for a project coordinator/proofreader.  The first line of the job description read: One of the countries fastest growing multi-channel marketing agencies … instead of One of the country’s …. 

The hiring company’s website showed a contact email address, so I sent them an email identifying the error.  A corporate VP in a distant city kindly replied (to my astonishment) and explained that the company’s proofreaders confine their work to customers’ documents.  In other words, if a document doesn’t affect the bottom line, no one proofreads it.

Photo by Adrian Pingstone from Wikipedia (Public Domain)

Should Internet content writers follow the model of this company?  Perhaps they should.  Each and every piece of writing you publish should have a goal.  If you can accomplish this goal without proofreading, maybe you shouldn’t proofread.  For example, if you are writing for search engines (bot fodder), errors may not make any difference in how high the search engine puts your article on the results list.  If you want human beings to forward a link to their friends or to link to your article from their blogs, you may want to correct errors.

Fact Checking

This morning telegraph.co.uk published an article about Leonid Ksanfomaliti’s claim that he’d found evidence of life on Venus in photographs taken by the space probe Venera-13.   The author of the article identified Venus as “the red planet” and stated the planet’s gravity was 9 times that of Earth.  Commenters pounced on these errors, and the paper quickly corrected them.  

The view from Venera-13. Photo from Wikipedia (Public Domain)

If you make statements whose errors could be corrected by an extra minute reading Wikipedia, human readers may bounce to a better article.  They may also fail to link to your article.  You may have to resort to black hat SEO techniques to acquire backlinks.  A few minutes of fact checking can help you avoid the need to generate deceptive backlinks and the risk of getting caught cheating.  On the other hand, you may be writing for true believers who won’t let facts stand in their way.  Once again, it may be a question of the goal of your writing.

Writing Badly is a Right

…everything is given to us by the party and the government and only one thing is taken away: the freedom to write badly. –Isaac Babel

If you publish online, you will slip up and publish errors.  Sure as Brin and Page misspelled googol as google, you will encounter readers who think all your content should come down or that you should never write for publication again because of the errors.  No possible pardon is possible, they think, for those who confuse Mars and Venus.  Only authorities with credentials should write, etc.  I argue against this position by reminding everyone that appeal to authority is a logical fallacy and that even someone as inaccurate and syntax-challenged as George W. Bush deserves the right to speak his mind.

George W. Bush from Wikipedia (Public Domain)

Moreover, even bad articles may do good.  Recently I’ve read some Chinese blogs.  I don’t know Chinese at all, so I either have to wait for translations or read with the aid of translation software.  After struggling with a particularly scrambled machine translation, I asked myself some questions. What if this were as good as it gets?  What if I lived in a country with aggressive Internet censorship?  What if only articles with mangled text and misspelled keywords could slip through to tell me about life outside my country?  In that case I would feel privileged to read even bad articles.

Many websites have been created in the past couple weeks going against PIPA and SOPA, these being SOPACountDown.com, SOPAStrike.com, and AmericanCensorship.org. All of these sites have information on the issue and give you a chance to take action. 

Even people out of America are taking action by protesting the state department. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking action, but it’s not enough. 

Hollywood is willing to stand up to opponents of the controversial anti-piracy bill in the U.S., known as SOPA, a position shared by employees and industry moguls even threatening to withdraw its financial support for the election of Barack Obama.

The Mecca of cinema, traditionally allied with the Democratic Party, expressed his anger this week after the White House opts against any legislation that would encourage Internet censorship and trying to extrapolate its application beyond U.S. territory.

Indeed, one of the objectives of SOPA is to transcend national and force the search engine providers and advertisers domains U.S. to block the services of any website is the place to be, when it is being investigated for posting copyrighted material without permission.

The film industry, through the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), is one of the major promoters of a tightening of legislation to protect copyright in the network, where each year are estimated more 6,000 million dollars (about 4.657 million euros) due to the illegal use of its products.

CONFLICT

The intervention of the White House was taken by surprise to many Hollywood executives, according to reports to the press on Wednesday, upset with Obama came to the point that several directors have decided to end their donations to the American president.

This loss of support could lead to a serious decline for the financing of Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, who frequently visit Los Angeles, especially at election time, to attend fundraising events.

The final step in the California town Obama was in October when he attended an event with prominent Latino figures of the show, the house of Antonio Banderas, and took part in a dinner hosted by Will Smith, whose cost was us $ 35,800 (about € 27,800 ) per person.

NO SOPA

The anti-piracy bill has found many critics and has become a very unpopular that even led to take place on Wednesday a “blackout” of a group of websites, including Wikipedia, to protest its passage.

While Hollywood is pushing for the initiative, their northern California, in Silicon Valley, such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon and eBay have partnered Netcoalition.com the platform to stop its passage in Congress next month.

Thus, it appears that, for now, companies in Silicon Valley, led by Google, are winning the public relations battle in this polemic, arguing that “soup” is synonymous with “censorship” on the web.

MEDIATOR

With the idea of ​​lowering tensions and finding points of agreement, the U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, is these days in California to meet with representatives of technology and entertainment industry, the two most powerful state.

To become law, however, the initiative must be approved by both houses of Congress.

I am more than six decades in age; I have been through years of upheaval and have seen the changes of our country, trends in society and in people, in general. People have changed and NOT for the good. The worst of them, I believe, is the ruthless business man or woman, especially the CEOs. Millions of dollars in wages and perks, high living and others just like him or her has changed America and America’s horizon. Now we stand on the precipice of yet another internal danger.

SOPA and PIPA

What is all the controversy about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) that are currently before Congress? We have until January 24 to find out and to also discover for ourselves what is really behind these bills and to stop the bills. Where there is smoke, there is fire and the smoke of these bills are obscuring the truth.

Why does the entertainment industry need a couple of over-kill bills to protect their rights? This is like swatting a fly with a Buick. Why hasn’t the entertainment industry done more to protect itself? That protection does not need the big guns of government censorship, destruction of the “offender’s” website, loss of income and credibility, not to mention the harm done to global commerce. Yet, the biggest loss could very well be American freedom.

America

America has always stood for freedom – freedom for the little guy just as well as for the big guy. Now we find that freedom eroded and sliding toward the edge of the abyss. There is entirely too much confusion about these bills. That alone should warn us that smoke is covering the real issues. The old adage, Follow the Money, applies. Who and what are behind these bills? Think for a moment.

See through the smoke. If the government gained control of the Internet via these “benign” and “nothing to worry about” bills, what then could we expect?

First of all, the loss of freedom. We would be told what we could and couldn’t do on our own web sites. We could expect our web sites to be monitored and regulated. We would be expected to back government agendas; to speak against them would mean a shutdown of our web sites.

Secondly, governments have been predictable for centuries; they vacuum money from their people, legally and illegally, in the form of taxes, fees, fines and takeovers. We have seen entirely too many acts of corruption by our leaders. The attitude of the public is blasé. Too many public leaders are crooked; we all know that. The crooked politician or president does not get put out of office, but arrogantly continues, term after term, running up debt and furthering corruption.

Thirdly, the government would control information. When information is controlled, the people are controlled, when the people are controlled, the government can carry on its agenda without obstacles. Soon we would find ourselves no longer in a democracy.

The Predictability of Government

The government already has a stinking track record of “regulating” their own agencies, offices, departments, administrations, programs and others. Remember these debacles?

Waco and the Branch Davidians and the strong-arm use of the federal law system; FEMA in general, FEMA in particular during Katrina; the Social Security loss of funds due to government entities that “borrowed” funds from the Social Security program for their own pet projects and never returned the money. Now it is the impoverished, aged, sick and premature tiny babies that are blamed as a “drain” on Social Security!

What about the health care system? To call it a mess is an understatement. Benefits and other aids are being ripped from those afore-mentioned and given to illegal immigrants who receive benefits not due them because of their illegal status.

We do not allow American prisoners some rights and felons are denied most rights: the right to vote or hold government jobs, and so on. Yes, the government won’t step up to the plate and do something about illegal entry into the U.S., even though our citizens are denied their rights when they have acted illegally. The government’s mishandling of immigration is undermining our economy and our national security.

The government has mishandled money since the first tax was levied in our country. We are already taxed for everything imaginable. Blinded by dollar signs, they are desperate to get their foot in the door of the Internet. From the examples of Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, the government can’t handle money. Our money. They have never figured out why Americans are forced to live on credit until their cards are maxed.

What about the waste of money in wars? Wars that the U.S. never intended to win. The loss of technology, money, materials and military personnel is an injustice and irresponsible. I recognize that there are times a country must go to war. But it should be under a set of predetermined conditions with a goal in mind.

American Losses

Our country’s men, women and children in the past decade has seen horrid catastrophic weather-related destruction: the tornadoes in Oklahoma and rains, floods, fires, mud slides, tornadoes, hail, drought and hurricanes have  battered the nation, racking up commercial losses through business loss and infrastructure damage and loss, loss of property and homes. Loss of citizens, pets, wild life, trees, food crops, gardens, food animals and fowl is heartbreaking.

Countless people are standing their own losses because the government did not deem their situation as grave enough to warrant federal aid.

I could go on. We have been victimized over and over again by our government and its hand in our pocket. Now the government wants to further withdraw money from our accounts by trying to shoulder its way into the Internet. Not just the government, but other dark undercurrents who also are vying for money and power. Undercurrents who fund lobbyists and other powerful groups to force their selfish interests to the forefront. The American citizen is under siege from all directions.

American Victims

Who will suffer the most should these bills be passed into law? The middle income, low income and the poverty level will be affected the most. This is where they find the information they need to make decisions, to find more critical information, to stay abreast of trends, to stay in touch with family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances around the world.

Stand UP, America!

The Internet helps the citizenry to make informed choices in their medical treatments, political candidates, businesses, and much, much more. Further, it is FREE! Since these income brackets — the middle, low and poverty — make up the majority of the population, it stands to reason that these are the most feared. They can make changes! They are a force to be reckoned with.

The marketing and commerce industries already know the value of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, Tumblr, Yahoo, eBay, Mozilla, Kickstarter, AOL, Zynga, and other social sites that are fertile grounds for advertisements and word of mouth endorsements. The government could impose injurious regulations on American businesses and enterprises.

The government would also gain control of all of these and countless others. Other countries would also play into our government’s hands because of the commerce and shipping prospects.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24. Sign all the online petitions you can find and let them know how you feel about this smokescreen and that you will not fall for their trickery. Write, e-mail and call your congress and senate representatives, your friends, family members and neighbors.

A growing amount of internet companies including Google and Wikipedia are striking and enlisting a blackout in protest against a new bill entitled the “Stop Online Piracy Act” or House bill 3261 and PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act).  If new legislation passes, the government and corporations would be able to take greater action in protecting intellectual property and copyright laws.  Offenders of this bill could receive a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison.  While there are legitimate claims as to how individuals lose money from knock off brands or not receiving money from songs and other infringements, these must be viewed as insignificant to the larger cultural and historical impact.

                Another country once tried a similar policy and tried to stop a group of people from smuggling ideas without payment and the smuggling of cheaper goods despite the higher quality of the goods produced in the home country.  This country was losing all sorts of money based on the illegal actions by the other country.  However, this country had previously ignored these infringements and only cracked down when the country was at a loss for money.  The results led to the American Revolutionary War.

                While the Americans smuggled physical items for the most part, the situation is relevant to the precursor of the American Revolutionary War.  Why couldn’t England enforce the laws it has enacted since the founding of the colonies?  The reason?  England had left America alone for about 100 years in which Americans frequently smuggled in foreign goods and England had done nothing about it.

 In the present situation, the government allowed for the internet to be free and after about a decade or so, the government now believes it can change the internet and make people pay more money to protect the interest of, for all purposes, a foreign entity.  SOPA would be a completely retroactive law and would most likely result in similar fashion which led to the Revolution.  This is not to say that the United States would split over a cheap internet, just as the United States did not break from England based on customs duties alone, however, the failure of the Navigation Acts completely undermined the legitimacy of English rule.  With so much ideological smuggling going on in the internet, it is virtually impossible [no pun intended] to completely enforce this bill if all internet sources chose to disobey the government.  Further, if the government did try to crack down, it would lead to the government spending tremendous amounts of money to find everyone to the point where the government might as well pay companies for their “losses” than to arrest and fine anyone who violates these laws.

In conclusion, the SOPA and PIPA are against the American tradition.  While intellectual property is important, cracking down has only a negative precedent to it and should be abandoned.  The internet is still a new phenomenon and requires special considerations regarding property rights.  Solutions regarding the internet should focus more on providing methods of giving legitimate companies a shot at selling their merchandise than dominating in a brutal crackdown on the internet culture. 

 -Be an American, don’t support PIPA and SOPA

There are 3 parts that compose these bills: 1) DNS Blocking 2) Search Engine Blacklisting 3) Private right to action.

Last year they blocked 84,000 INNOCENT small businesses…all the governement could say in regards to their flaw and blocking them was, “OOPS!” Really! Oops is ok is when a little kid breaks something, but oops does not cut ruining peoples’ lively hood and business!

If this bill goes through say goodbye to Yahoo, Gmail, Google, Msn,hotmail, AOL, Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Triond, & billions of other sites that are detrimental to the way they see internet. Yes I even said Triond. Triond supports only Unique to you stuff absolutely, but they are linked with millions of other sites that may have a blacklist eye on them! If it is a site that shares info, odds are blacklsit will ensue. You can even kiss goobye Sites you pay for music and video downloading…Itunes being a main one. They are talking about blocking all sites that have anything to do with you not buying the products first hand people! It is censorship at its most secretive.

Censoring the internet will ruin more than they realize. They reserve the rights to tell you that well since you accessed a black list site, even if you didn’t realize it, they reserve the right to revoke internet ability and sue you!

I am not against entertainment world by far. I understand they feel ripped off by people downloading their stuff and them not seeing anything for it. This is wrong I agree. But if you want to stop this piracy stop creating burnable dvds and cds because as creative as man is, we will find ways to use them inappropriately to try to get around having to pay the man. It is just how society has come to be. Allowing this censorship will not only start an invasion of privacy and intrusion against our rights, but the entertainment community will also loose billions of dollars. Why you ask? Well, If you think on it, though they are pirating…it is in a sense free advertising. For example, I would never have even heard of Rammstein or Enya if it wouldn’t have been for yahoo music videos. i was just playing top hits and they popped in there somehow. I have found MANY bands I never had heard of through advertisements online, free streaming sites, and stuff like that. I found Kerli from a site, can’t recall which one. But then after I heard her music I went and bought her cd! I never would have even known about her without that streaming site.

Honestly, how much money does an artist or actor see out of the money per cd, dvd, blue-ray, or disk. These artists supporting and many in the entertainment business are not thinking it all through. Because without mp3, mp4 and formats compatible for ipods,mp3, and mp4 players which are found on streaming sites, downloadable music like limewire, itunes, bearshare, etc these would be obsolete! A cd is a completely different format that the ipod, mp3, and mp4 don’t recognize. The entertainment will loose money there and they don’t even realize it. Bearshare has a free and a premium just like limewire. However it is free for a limited time. People have gotten smart on how to get around free trial periods.

I am not a person who believes in conspiracies or theories without proof. Within the last 8 hrs i have read article after article and watched video after video over this bill. This is just the beginning. If they are able to take away internet access without probable cause…what rights and restrictions or privacies will they enforce and raise an invasion to or take away?! Think people, do we want some stranger telling us we can’t post a funny pic we saw on some site to our friends? Internet is advertising and communication at its finest. It is innovation. Do we want to go back to the stone age of technology or advance? Think people think. I invite you to look at just a few of the sources I looked at below. Make your own decision. Are you willing to give up freedoms you enjoy willingly? Have you forgotten your rights that easily?!

Constitutional rights of the first ammendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Know your rights and make the government think twice before they try to take them away. Our forefathers gave them to us and now our new leaders want to take them from us….or as they call it censor our rights!

Reference sites, veideos, & Materials:

1. http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Amend.html
2. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57360665-503544/sopa-pipa-what-you-need-to-know/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
4. http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/
5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-segal/stop-the-internet-blackli_b_739836.html
6. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/internet-blacklist-power-to-be-stripped-from-senates-protect-ip-act.ars
7. http://blacklistcheck.com/
8. http://blacklists.eff.org/
9. http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-san-jose/coica-senate-bill-s3804-to-blacklist-internet
10. http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show
11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk3cIMAfMKs
12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HuUCfYR-Jo&feature=related
13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBlZ0GWjpqk&feature=relmfu

People there are millions more resources to back up my words. Even the nation’s news station are hoping on board! Today is the internet blackout day. Wikpedia blocking user is just a taste of what they’ll take from us!

2012 unpublished work. © by Rebbecca Abernathy

(This list is compiled from sources which may be other than the sites themselves. No responsibility is accepted by the author for the incorrect report of a site’s status. The author is hereby clearly stating that this list was not intended to discourage any internet user from visiting any site, whether listed below or not, on any day).

About the author

Daniel is a professional freelance SEO enthusiast and web / graphic designer with eif media and a paid writer and blogger for Triond, a place where original content is rewarded. 

Some of his foolish beliefs include making the internet a more attractive and informative place.