Internet Blackout Update

While it appears that the January 18th blackout may have given the US Congress a moment’s pause to reconsider, SOPA/PIPA has not been entirely defeated.

Given the enormous lobbying power the entertainment industry has, it seems unfortunately reasonable that some kind of legislation to curb copying will eventually come to pass.  The only question is when and in what form.

The SOPA War: Why the GOP Turned Against Hollywood bit.ly/zrmGo2—
Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) February 03, 2012

Surprisingly, at least on WordPress.com, there’s been very little mentioned of ACTA, which looks to be far worse and with a much further reach than SOPA/PIPA.

If #SOPA was an aircraft carrier, #ACTA and #TPP are nuclear submarines – goo.gl/LZsyw—
Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) February 02, 2012

So, where is all this heading? Is the heyday of the “free” Internet over? Thoughts?

January 18: Blackout the Web for SOPA

Using WordPress to blog, to publish, to communicate things online that once upon a time would have been relegated to an unread private journal (or simply remained unspoken, uncreated, unshared) makes you a part of one of the biggest changes in modern history: the democratization of publishing and the independent web. Every time you click Publish, you are a part of that change…

via WordPress › Help Stop SOPA/PIPA.

If you host your site here on WordPress.com, here are two three ways you can include your site in the blackout protest against SOPA/PIPA.

First, you can add the black “STOP SOPA” ribbon that you see in the upper right corner of this site to your website by copying and pasting this code into an unnamed text widget:

<a target='_blank' class='stop-sopa-ribbon' href='http://americancensorship.org/'><img src='[image URL]' alt='Stop SOPA' style='position:fixed;top:0;right:0;z-index:100000;cursor:pointer;' /></a>

where ‘[image URL]‘ is the location of this file that you download to your computer and upload to your site’s Media Library. (hat tip to Macmanx)

Secondly, if you wish, you can use an overlay to “blackout” your site for the day, by copying and pasting this code into an unnamed text widget:

<div align="center" style="position:fixed;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;right:0;background-color:#000;-moz-opacity:0.8;opacity:.80;filter:alpha(opacity=80);text-align:center;font-size:800%;font-weight:bold;padding-top:300px;"><a style="color:#fff;" href="http://americancensorship.org/" target="_blank">Stop SOPA</a></div>

(hat tip to Panos)

Don’t forget to tag your post SOPA.

UPDATE: Third-WordPress.com officially enters the protest with special settings you can enable on your WordPress.com blog. You can display a black “Stop Censorship” ribbon until January 24th, as well as choosing to completely or partially black out your site on January 18th. Make your voice heard and join the protest.

Beyond the visual protest, the most important action you can take if you are an American citizen is to contact your State Representative and Senator and tell them why Online Piracy is not the problem. Google has prepared an excellent website explaining the issues.

Other resources:

via Lorelle on WordPress: January 18: Join Reddit in a National Blackout Day of Protest Against SOPA

via ZDNet: Google to protest SOPA, alongside Wikipedia, Reddit, others

via timethief:  House Kills SOPA – Denver Computers | Examiner.com

via PandoDaily: CloudFlare Gives Sites a “Less Foolish” Way to Fight SOPA, PIPA [Updated]

Breaking! Beatles on Palestinian Bid for Statehood

Try to see it my way,
Do I have to keep on talking till I can’t go on?
While you see it your way,
Run the risk of knowing that our love may soon be gone.

Chorus:
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Think of what you’re saying.
You can get it wrong and still you think that it’s all right.
Think of what I’m saying,
We can work it out and get it straight, or say good night.

Chorus:
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Life is very short, and there’s no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend.
I have always thought that it’s a crime,
So I will ask you once again.

Try to see it my way,
Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.
While you see it your way
There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long.

Chorus:
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Life is very short, and there’s no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend.
I have always thought that it’s a crime,
So I will ask you once again.

Try to see it my way,
Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.
While you see it your way
There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long.

Chorus:
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Again, I’m not being flippant about this, but you have to admit there’s a lot in these lyrics that fits the Palestinian/Israeli dialog (or lack thereof) pretty well.

Frankly, both sides need more statesmen/women and less politicians. Unfortunately, politicians are all we have.

Moving right along at full tilt

Or is it tilt-a-whirl?

Trying hard not to think about all the things that still need doing before our Passover holiday in little over a week’s time. Things have become a bit more complicated while I deal with recovering from another bout of pneumonia (the 2nd in two months) and a third round of antibiotics. Everything leaves me breathless. Thankfully, I have two sisters-in-law to lean on for cooking (and a strange feeling to not be including my mother-in-law (z”l) in that sentence), though the festive meal is at our house. I’ll be leaning on my sons and husband for the post-meal cleanup, which takes almost as long as the cooking and preparation.

Also weighing heavily on our minds as we go into the week before Passover holiday is the current situation in the south, which picked up considerable speed this weekend. Since early Friday morning, at least 75 rocket and missile attacks have been launched from Gaza, including an anti-tank missile that was fired on a school bus, mortally wounding a 16 year-old student. Who knows how many more rocket attacks before this post is published Sunday morning Israel time.

Meanwhile, Mr. Haniyeh has asked that Israel stop retaliating, to which I can only reply, “Chad Gadya.”

Updated: seems I’m not alone in my thoughts on the latter subject. The Wifely Person Speaks. Go listen.

Better shared!

Every PicApp Picture Tells A Story, Or Not

A major change in the way the PicApp service works has left WordPress.com users wondering how much longer the PicApp images they’ve already embedded in their blogs over the past year will be available for viewing. WordPress.com’s Raanan Bar Cohen announced the collaboration with PicApp almost a year ago in near glowing terms.

We all love adding great images to our blog posts, and today we’ve enabled a new WordPress.com Shortcode that adds millions of available premium images to the mix, all for free.

The announcement goes on to explain that,

The related-images strip you see embedded at the bottom of each photo links to pages on PicApp.com that help support the photographers and agencies involved with these images.

So when did it all go sour? Apparently PicApp recently changed their modus operandi from that relatively innocuous ”related-images strip” to a full blown, javascript lightbox overlay that includes advertising. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t advertising before; however, as mentioned above, in order to see it you had to click on the related image and be whisked away to the PicApp website. Now the advertising comes to your blog.