Wednesday, November 16th 2011
US Senate Holds Hearings on Great Firewall Of America
Today, the United States Congress will hold hearings of an internet censorship system for America. That's right, "Land of the Free" gets a Great Firewall of its own, which is proposed to be practically as empowered as the one People's Republic of China uses, only that it threatens to have wider reaching consequences on areas such as freedom of speech, freedom of information (by that we're not endorsing piracy), and the integrity of the DNS system.
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/31100268?byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
The original idea behind this bill is to curb piracy of digital information, be it content or proprietary software, but is peppered with loopholes that allow the US government to practically censor any content it wants, and for bigger internet-enabled companies to cripple new startups. Social media sites that have traces of copyrighted content can be blocked overnight, if they are found to be serving as rally points for protestors in the future. Just think about it. Lets say a group sets up a social media site as a rally point for its protests. What will the detractors of that group have to do? Simple - post copyrighted content on that particular social media site, and make the copyright holders appeal for punitive action against that site. In the whole process, webmasters will be made policemen of social content on their site, because they will be made liable.
What does this mean for the rest of the world? It's simple - America is the gold standard for freedom and liberty. The moment the US passes such a legislation, other free societies around the world will be inclined to pass similar legislations, for the sheer amount of power it dispenses to the governments. Learn more here.
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/31100268?byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
The original idea behind this bill is to curb piracy of digital information, be it content or proprietary software, but is peppered with loopholes that allow the US government to practically censor any content it wants, and for bigger internet-enabled companies to cripple new startups. Social media sites that have traces of copyrighted content can be blocked overnight, if they are found to be serving as rally points for protestors in the future. Just think about it. Lets say a group sets up a social media site as a rally point for its protests. What will the detractors of that group have to do? Simple - post copyrighted content on that particular social media site, and make the copyright holders appeal for punitive action against that site. In the whole process, webmasters will be made policemen of social content on their site, because they will be made liable.
What does this mean for the rest of the world? It's simple - America is the gold standard for freedom and liberty. The moment the US passes such a legislation, other free societies around the world will be inclined to pass similar legislations, for the sheer amount of power it dispenses to the governments. Learn more here.
109 Comments on US Senate Holds Hearings on Great Firewall Of America
This bill is almost just a way to give the US government and its affiliates proper authorization to do such things, and use it for things other than counter-terrorism.
Now move to some bill like this, this is lobbyists pushing congress to pass a bill for them, while there are other more important bills. If this crap about the economy wasn't going on right now, this still wouldn't make it into the news, but it might make it onto smaller media outsources, which aren't bought by the big media corporations. Instead they are all talking about congress and the economy, we all know whats going to happen, so focus on other shit, its really annoying.
Anyways this bill will pass, no matter what you do about it, they have a lot of support with their money. It will only die in the house before it reaches the senate, and don't count on Obama vetoing this bill. You see there is bipartisan support, actually a lot, those kinds of bills at this time works.
The only way to fix the US government is to get rid of every one currently running it.
The average income of a house of representatives is 750K
The average income of a senator is 1.2-1.5million
unless your income is in line with theirs, they have different values than yours, no matter how much they say otherwise. Like look at Obama, he acts like a poor man, hes not poor, and to make matters worse hes a wimp.
We need to get rid of all of them, replace them, but not all at once. keep some from both sides, at least the big names.
but what it is important to note is that we should NOT be taking the easy way out, don't ever vote to make it easier to get rid of people you don't like or policies you don't like, or else you will do what democracies before us did, and that is what lead to the demise of their governments by their own actions. LIke don't vote for a guy because you hated the other guy, happened in 2008 and will happen in 2012.
www.stopcensorship.org/ (operated by DemandProgress.org)
Over 50,000 have already signed up and they're hoping for 100,000 by Monday. Spread it around to US citiznes who strongly feels internet censorship is wrong.
Senator Wyden still wants more signatures though so if you haven't signed the link above, go for it.
Here's an Article torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-130-domain-names-in-mass-crackdown-111125/
torrentfreak.com/dns-seizure-takes-out-megaupload-111129/
and here's the fix-as an example MegaUpload
First try using the IP address not the http...
174.140.154.12/
If that doesn't work, try this...
1.Click the Start Orb, then select Control Panel.
2.Click on Network and Sharing Center.
3.Click on your primary connection or Local Area Connection under Active Networks.
4.Click the Properties button.
Windows 7 may prompt you for permission to make network setting changes.
5.Highlight 'Internet Protocol Version 4' and click Properties.
6.Click the radio button 'Use the following DNS server addresses:' and type 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 in the Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server fields.
7.Click OK button, then the Close button, then Close again. Finally, close the Network and Sharing Center window.
At this point, we highly suggest that you flush your DNS resolver cache and web browser caches to ensure that your new configuration settings take effect.
FOR MAC: go to system prefs, click NETWORK, click your connection, click "advanced", click DNS, click +, type 8.8.8.8, click OK, click APPLY... and ENJOY!
For Linux: (another cut and paste I have NO linux experience)
Under Linux / UNIX / BSD operating system, you need to edit the /etc/resolv.conf file and add the line:
nameserver {IP-OF-THE-DNS-1}
nameserver {IP-OF-THEISP-DNS-SERVER-2}
Login as the root, enter:
# vi /etc/resolv.conf
OR
$ sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf
Modify or enter nameserver as follows:
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
Save and close the file. To test DNS configuration type any one of the following command:
$ host google.com
$ dig google.com
$ ping google.com
$ nslookup your-domain.com
Output:
google.com has address 72.14.207.99
google.com has address 64.233.187.99
google.com has address 64.233.167.99
google.com mail is handled by 10 smtp4.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 10 smtp1.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 10 smtp2.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 10 smtp3.google.com.
I am even more pissed off cause I feel like I am going to remain in the minority of people that even give a shit. people dont care about politics until it slaps them in the face with violations that directly impact their life in some major way
I don't think it's a matter of not caring, I think it's a matter of ignorance.