Sign This: Stop The Internet Blacklist!

According to Demand Progress:

Just the other day, President Obama urged other countries to stop censoring the Internet. But now the United States Congress is trying to censor the Internet here at home. A new bill (S. 3804) being debated this week would have the Attorney General create an Internet blacklist of sites that US Internet providers would be required to block.

This is the kind of heavy-handed censorship you’d expect from a dictatorship, where one man can decide what web sites you’re not allowed to visit. But the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to pass the bill this week — and Senators say they haven’t heard much in the way of objections! That’s why we need you to sign our urgent petition to Congress demanding they oppose the Internet blacklist.

Sign the petition here
Read more about the bill here

Since Google was so willing to abandon its commitment to an open network in a deal with Verizon, the fight against the internet blacklist can not be lost. Otherwise the free and open internet we have come to know and love will be no more.

On a sidenote:
Just last week a French three-strikes anti-piracy law Hadopi (not to unlike the proposed blacklist law) went live. Copyright holders are currently in the process of sending out tens of thousands of IP-addresses of alleged infringers to Internet service providers, and this will increase to over a million in a few weeks. The ISPs have to hand over the identities of the associated accounts to the authorities within a week, or face a fine of 1500 euros (roughly $2021) per unidentified IP-address. Penalties for those busted range from hefty fines to disconnecting the Internet connection of the infringer altogether.

Infographic: Google’s Data Removal Service

click the image for a larger version

According to Good Magazine (published July 20, 2010):

Google compiles and holds vast amounts of the world’s data. It’s supposed to be totally private but sometimes governments need that information for investigations, and they request it from Google (or its subsidiaries like YouTube, Blogger, or Orkut). Other times, governments find a piece of data offensive or erroneous, and request that Google remove it from its database entirely. The search giant makes all these requests public. This is a look at which countries ask Google for the most information on its users, which ask Google to remove the most information, and how often Google gives information.

The infographic was designed by MGMT design.

posted by: Brent Carter

[shift + 3] pound it out

The French have vaguely introduced an irony mark into their glyphs and there is a dormant sarcasm mark in the Ethiopian language. Both marks are simply a backwards question mark.

There is a need for a mark to clear up irony and derisive irony in the English language. As instant messaging, text messaging, and emailing have emerged as powerful forms of communication, we also see new forms of miscommunication. There is no easy way make the backwards question mark on a QWERTY keyboard, and virtually no way on most, if not all, cell phone keypads. Some use < sarcasm > at the end of a sentence, others use a rolling-eye emoticon, and the most reasonable to date is an exclamation mark inside brackets [!]. However, writing out the word sarcasm or even adding brackets to an exclamation mark seem extraneous within the flow of natural communication.

I propose we make the pound sign (or number sign) (#) [shift + 3] the representation for sarcasm and ironical bantering. It’s on every keyboard, it’s an easy key command, it’s next to $ and not far from ! and won’t cause confusion as long as it is used to mark the end of a sentence. We don’t use the # sign after words or sentences, except to represent lbs in a recipe, and that is rare.

In the beginning it might seem a little superfluous, especially when used improperly. It’ll be like one of your friends getting braces, it’s weird at first but the awkwardness soon becomes normal.

If you’ve experienced the pain of trying to explain to someone that you weren’t being sincere in a textual dialogue but you in fact mean the complete opposite. If you ever want to respond to someone quickly and without further interrogation but you find yourself reluctant to throw out the ironic reply. Spread the word of the #.

Pledge your official support at [shift+3] saves lives

Sarcasm

by: Scott Starrett