Much abuzz online yesterday had to deal with the congressional threat to the internet known as SOPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act is a federal bill which would create a blacklist of websites which internet service providers would be required to maintain and enforce. The blacklist would allegedly include websites which either host or link to data which, per its existence, is violating copyright laws. The very concept of ‘piracy’ is on its face hyperbolic. It is laughable Newspeak to equate data sharing with the practice of pillaging vessels at sea. PIPA, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, is the senate version of the dinosaur recording industry’s legislative attempt to thwart the free exchange of information. Also lobbying very strongly with the MPAA is the pharmaceutical industry, which profits heavily from onerous intellectual property regulation.
Reddit was the first eminent domain of the internet to announce January 18 as its blackout date to protest SOPA. Wikipedia announced its participation with similar measures. Google demonstrated its solidarity by featuring a black stripped homepage with a subheader requesting that people contact their so-called representatives and ask for a rejection of state control over the internet.
Heavy traffic to government servers hosting contact information for congress and the senate caused many pages to be inaccessible for the day.
In the eastern European nation of Slovenia earlier today, a paywall was erected engrossing many of the most prolific digital media distributors. Piano Media, a Slovakian paywall service corporation, has convinced nine publishers and twelve websites to adopt a shared paywall, which will cost subscribers €2 for a weekly pass.
The model for Piano’s cartelization of media is similar to that of television subscriptions. At present, more people are abandoning cable and satellite live programming for the boundless information frontier provided by the internet. Few subscription services have fared well in the purge caused by the internet, with a notable exception being the growth seen by Netflix. Piano’s model divides subscription profits with the companies participating in the paywall, giving 70% of the revenue to media distributors and keeping thirty cents on the dollar for itself. It measures traffic among clients and based on where more traffic is channeled, Piano compensates the company.
Delo, Slovenia’s largest publication, plans to put about 10% of its content behind the wall, keeping the remaining content free so as to keep constant its web traffic. In Slovakia, media giant SME has approximately 5% of its content paywalled at the moment. (more…)
Loudon, New Hampshire – On Tuesday, Republicans in the state of New Hampshire vote for their presidential nominee in the first primary in the nation.
With all eyes on the horse race between the six major Republican candidates, some interesting political trends within the state of New Hampshire itself have gone unexamined. The state – with an official motto of “Live Free or Die” – has a political culture steeped in a small-government mindset. And partly for that reason, almost 1,000 political migrants have moved to New Hampshire over the past several years as part of the Free State Project. (more…)
At Sunday morning’s presidential debate held at the Capitol Center for the Arts, one arrest was made during a foiled “mic check” attempt by Occupy New Hampshire activists. Matthew Richards of Manchester was arrested for trespassing after attempting to hold open a door at the theater to allow protesters into the debate. He was tackled by security and placed under arrest by Concord police. Dave Ridley captured the scene following the arrest, as Matthew is brought out of the building. This is his second protest related trespassing arrest, as he was also taken into custody for a short period following the eviction of the Occupy NH encampment in Veterans Park.
Even the most totalitarian regimes ultimately rest on granted authority. Misdeeds must be hidden or legitimacy erodes. Censorship, propaganda, purposeful omissions and blatant lies fuel the Statist Quo.
Enter the free flow of information.
Case in point, the How to Make a Wicking Bed Garden instructional sheet. Days after being created by @BrknSdwlkFrm (great work!) it was being distributed in NYC and translated into Arabic to be disseminated on the streets of Egypt.
As the new year approaches, unprecedented global unrest continues to mount. With the New Hampshire primary two weeks away, the military presence in Iraq has officially come to an end, despite reports of approximately five thousand paramilitary contractors being employed to protect US government properties in Baghdad. The conflict is three months away from its ninth year anniversary, and ends shortly before the election process begins involving the president who campaigned on bringing the war to a conclusion.
In Russia, the largest protests since the fall of the Soviet Union are occurring against the decade-plus rule of Vladimir Putin. Putin ceded the presidency to Dimitry Medvedev in 2008, but has since held the number two position of Prime Minister.
Russian President Dimitry Medvedev with the late North Korean head of state Kim Jong Il.
The Chinese village of Wukan is in open revolt against the central government of the PRC since a village representative was murdered in police custody. Police and communist party officials were expelled from the town, prompting the central government to establish barricades preventing food from being brought into the area. Search engine results for Wukan are being heavily censored by the central government to prevent news of the uprising from spreading.
