Digital Comic Museum > News and Announcements
01.18.2012 - DCM IS ON STRIKE TODAY!
Yoc:
https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/images/StopSOPA-banner.jpgHi Gang,
We the staff of DCM are taking the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) bills soon up for vote Very Seriously!
DCM is the kind of site that without much doubt would be directly affected by these bills. Yes we are hosting Public Domian scans but that is very unlikely to stop someone, Anyone really, from being able to have us blocked/and or sued without much trouble at all by using these draconian laws.
To learn more about PIPA and SOPA try these links -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/17/stop-sopa-or-web-will-go-dark
And please consider filling in and sending out this form - http://americancensorship.org/
Normally DCM is far, FAR from a political hotbed. We actively discourage hot-button issues but where the very life of this wonderful site is directly in the cross-hairs - well we don't like it!
We've joined this one day strike as a small protest against these bills. We hope you will click the link and learn more. Maybe even let your representatives know we Don't Want This To Happen!
Thanks for your time,
-Yoc
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The strike is over but the issue is far from dead. Please consider contacting your representatives about this huge threat to freedom of speech on the net. DCM would most assuredly be crippled if not killed by such laws.
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OtherEric:
Not much to add to what Yoc said, other than I'm proud that our site is participating.
John C:
Absolutely. Basically, there are two parts to the bills.
First, there's the main piece, where the US wants to expand the DMCA-takedown process for foreign sites, allowing a copyright owner to erase a "site dedicated to infringement" from all registries. There's no real indication as to what "foreign" or "dedicated" means. If DMCA actions are a good example, then dedication may be hosting a file with a suspicious name. And as for foreign, I've heard Congressmen say that .COM sites are safe, but The Pirate Bay (a BitTorrent "tracker") is a prime target in examples of why the law is needed.
The shutdown includes hosting, payment processing, search results, and name servers, for the entire domain. It's worth pointing out that when Afghanistan censored their local name servers a few years back, it resulted in random outages around the world for days as the servers tried to figure out who was right. In the end, the Afghan servers failed and were "fixed" more often than the officials could censor.
The other major part of the bills is the more troubling part. It encourages vigilantism by providers, granting them complete immunity for cutting off a site based on "credible information" that the site is hosting infringing material...or information on how to circumvent censorship elsewhere. The burden of proof is on the site owner, even if the site doesn't monitor what gets posted (a "safe harbor," under the DMCA), not to mention criminalizing helping people get information.
In other words, sound official enough in your e-mail, and you can erase Facebook from the Internet or cut off Wikipedia's donations. And we're in this, too, of course. I doubt PayPal (who handles our donations) is interested in hiring people just to investigate whether or not we're actual pirates, for example.
So, those in the United States, bug your representatives. These guys even use your IP address to point you in the right direction:
http://grassroutes.us/sopa
E-mail address, Facebook account, Twitter handle, and phone number, where available.
If you're not in the United States, this affects you, too. If you run a non-US site (GAC, for example), you risk your American audience (and revenue) being cut off. And the rat's nest of treaties and political bullying will bring these laws to your shores soon enough (ACTA, for example). So I encourage you to call your representatives to explain that you won't stand for censorship and they should be pressuring their counterparts in the United States to stop this.
Douglas Adams published an article on "How to Leave the Planet," where he suggested calling NASA, then the White House to put pressure on them, then the Kremlin to pressure the White House, then the Vatican ("I gather his switchboard is infallible") to put pressure on everybody else. Which besides being very funny (with the numbers listed in the article), isn't the worst advice in the world.
When contacting your representative, (1) make it clear that you appreciate the effort (lie if you must, or at least appreciate the stress) they put in for your community, (2) give them a scapegoat by suggesting that they were misled, not wrong, in supporting bad bills ("I don't know who pitched this as a benefit to the economy..."), (3) explain your position briefly and make sure there's no factual error to pick at, and (4) in closing, play peacock and "sign" your name with a list of any credentials and positions you hold that indicate you're connected to people.
jfglade:
Good on you for deciding to participate in the blackout yesterday. I wasn't aware you were doing that until nearly midnight (my time) but I was happy to see you had brought the problem up to the membership here (although some are not North Americans, the results could still effect them). For Americans, it isn't a bad idea to sign on-line petitions and e-mail or phone your congressmen and tell them you do not want them supporting the bills in question.
I see this as not a question of copyright enforcement but as a Free Speech issue, but even if you don't I believe it is still in the best interest to prevent both bills from becoming law.
bchat:
--- Quote from: John C on January 18, 2012, 05:58:07 AM ---In other words, sound official enough in your e-mail, and you can erase Facebook from the Internet or cut off Wikipedia's donations. And we're in this, too, of course. I doubt PayPal (who handles our donations) is interested in hiring people just to investigate whether or not we're actual pirates, for example.
--- End quote ---
Statements like this ignore parts of the proposed Acts that have been put in place to prevent abuse. In fact, one of the laws (forget which because I read both in the same day) penalizes anyone who makes a false Copyright infringement claim against a website. And does anyone seriously believe that companies like Marvel Comics, Disney, Warner Bros Music, Time Warner, NBC, Verizon, Apple or MGM will allow sites they actively use (like Facebook) to "disappear" from the internet?
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