Google Protesting Proposed US Censorship of the Web

JFenix

Google stands with many other companies and people to fight against new legislation.
Look at their homepage today.  You guys rock Google!

JFenix

4.5 Million People Signed Google's Anti-SOPA Petition


For opponents of SOPA and PIPA, Wednesday’s internet blackout and Google’s was a huge success. Eighteen Senators changed their position on PIPA, Paul Tassi reports; and 4.5 million people signed Google’s anti-censorship petition, according to the LA Times.

“There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs,” the petition reads. “Too much is at stake -– please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA.”

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Wikipedia and Google ROCKED yesterday!  

Bravo!

JFenix

I honestly can’t recall a similar effort – eighteen Senators changed their positions – or a similar instance of online activism. As Paul notes, it wasn’t out of the goodness of our elected official’s hearts either that made them run. They read the political writing on the wall, turned tail in the opposite direction.

This isn’t purely online grassroots activism, obviously – Google is a huge corporation as are many opponents of SOPA – but to see sites like Reddit and Wikipedia, both largely user driven and community oriented, help start to change the political outcomes of major pieces of legislation is to take a glimpse into the future.

Wow - happy to say I was a part of that.  I signed every petition that came my way and did help to share links to them.

Kind of restores your faith a bit.  Things are not hopeless.  We can make them listen to us.

CVHuan

Thanks for keeping up the good fight, JFenix.

LCSULLA

JFenix Post time: 2012-1-20 00:18
Wow - happy to say I was a part of that.  I signed every petition that came my way and did help to ...

Meanwhile,

Megaupload has just been taken down completely with the sufficent current legal means.

Proving that the Bills are completely unnecessary for the reasonable aim to fight copyright infringement.

On a side note:

Google and the others should have, aside from the "call your congressman" tools,
given information on the results of the Bills, including the full information about the sponsors and co-sponsors of those bills,
branding them as enemies of consitutional freedoms of speech and freedom of information.

JFenix

Proving that the Bills are completely unnecessary for the reasonable aim to fight copyright infringement.

Exactly.  There is no need for it at all.

What they need to do is to change their business model.  People want everything for free on the internet.  You can't get past it.  And with social media and forums like this - people are going to share various kinds of media with each other.

You don't have to look at it as 'loosing billions each year from copy-write infringements'.  Change the business model.  Make money from advertising like all other content providers like newspapers.

JFenix

Holy crap LC!

I didn't read the story on Megaupload until now.

This is crazy.