On January 18, 2012, the world awoke to an unprecedented online protest. Dozens of the most widely-used websites, including Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla, Tumblr, Craigslist, Reddit, and Wired Magazine, had “blacked out” to show their joint opposition to two anti-piracy laws that threatened to bring authoritarian censorship to the American Internet. The demonstration did not go unnoticed, forcing mainstream media outlets to cover a story they had attempted to avoid for months and galvanizing once-weak resistance to the bills in Congress.
The protest came just before a vote on two controversial pieces of legislation in the United States Congress. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) are two nearly identical versions of the same proposed law, in the House and Senate, respectively. The bills, sponsored almost entirely by proponents of the entertainment industry, aim to prevent copyright infringement by targeting foreign-based websites dedicated to piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods. The problem has perturbed the industry for years, as these sites are outside of the jurisdiction of United States law enforcement. The motive of the bills is honorable enough, but the sweeping new powers they grant the government to combat these websites and the ambiguous language used to describe these powers set a vastly dangerous precedent—one disturbing enough to incite opposition from some of the most influential Internet companies in the world.
The problem with the bills is, of course, in the execution of the stated goals. These new laws would target rogue websites in four ways. The first involves forcing all American Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to redirect all users who try to access a site accused of infringement, effectively blocking Americans from accessing the site. The second step involves forcing money transfer systems like PayPal to cease all payments to the business operating the website. It also requires all advertising networks to halt the display of advertisements on the maligned website. The third strategy would command all American content aggregators—including Google, Yahoo, message boards, and virtually every other website—to censor out all links to the website in question. The final proposal would heighten penalties for certain forms of online copyright infringement, up to five years in prison. To put that into perspective, a person convicted of posting a Michael Jackson song to YouTube would have to serve a year in prison longer than the doctor who killed Michael Jackson.
Contrary to the fundamental judicial values of this country, these new bills exercise a “shoot first; ask questions later” methodology. Through the four steps mentioned above, the government would have the power to obliterate the business of any website targeted. But the underlying problem is that it assumes the guilt of these foreign websites first, punishes them severely—and most likely fatally, and only then is it up to the site itself to prove innocence. If a site is wrongly accused and is subjected to SOPA/PIPA’s wrath, it can challenge the ruling, but it cannot sue the company that requested it be censored. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and all the other intellectual property organizations lobbying for these bills would be allowed to exercise draconian vigilante justice over the Internet without the slightest risk of accountability.
This aspect of the bills is dangerous enough, for the first time imposing censorship over the Internet in the United States and erecting an American counterpart to China’s infamous “Great Firewall.” Even ignoring the enormous threat to free speech posed by SOPA and PIPA, the ambiguity of the provisions of the legislation reveals that their potential targets go far beyond the “rogue” foreign sites it claims to defend against. Section 103 of SOPA describes an infringing website as one that presents itself as “offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates” copyright infringement, sale of counterfeit goods, etc. Because of the vagueness of this language, any American-operated website could fall under the jurisdiction of this legislation. If Google happens to return a search result that links to a website that engages in piracy, Google could be considered “facilitating” piracy and thus fall under the full weight of SOPA. That means theoretically, any American site could be fully censored, have its funding cut, and lose all revenues just because a user posted a shady link in a comment.
Another part of the same section of SOPA actually makes illegal the act of even attempting to make it difficult for law enforcement to determine whether or not a site is in violation of copyright. As Salman Khan of the now-renowned Khan Academy pointed out in his video breakdown of the legislation, the real-world analogy of this provision would make it a crime to close one’s own door, because closing a door helps conceal what might be illegal activity; even if no such activity is occuring, it would still be a crime. A completely legitimate site could be punished for simply taking actions to avoid the appearance that it had been functioning illegally. It is mind-boggling that a piece of legislation could be written with such recklessness.
These massive loopholes, obviously, undermine the entire framework of the Internet, which relies on the fact that websites are not fully responsible for the actions of their users. No site with user-generated content, like YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Google, or Flickr can operate without this protection afforded by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. Yet, this is exactly what the bill’s supporters, namely the RIAA, MPAA, and other proponents of the entertainment industry, want. They are so focused on ending piracy that sacrificing liberty in the process seems to them completely worthwhile. Keep in mind that these are the same organizations that supported making the VCR and cassette tapes illegal.
SOPA and PIPA have drawn opposition from across the technology industry and from growing numbers of ordinary citizens. Countless open letters have been authored to Congress, including one from the CEOs of the fourteen largest Internet companies, one from a consortium of Internet engineers pointing out the vast security concerns the censorship would produce, and one from a group of prominent musicians who realized the bills’ dangers. Even the Obama administration has come out against the bills in their current form. The January 18 “blackout” protest was merely the culmination of months of outrage expressed on the Internet from companies and people alike. It was significant, though, because it drew attention to the issue, something that had not been done effectively beforehand—after all, who owns the news media?
For now, at least, it seems a victory may have been won by the bills’ opponents. Unfortunately, even if these two bills are stopped, it will only be a matter of time before the same provisions are slipped into another bill without the same widespread opposition. After all, PIPA was a rehash of a defeated 2010 bill called COICA. Hopefully, however, representatives and senators across the country will have learned from this event and will scrutinize future attempts at Internet censorship more closely.
There is no question that the illegal acquisition of copyrighted material is a problem that needs to be faced. But it would be pleasant to see the entertainment industry at least consider the possibility that declining sales might just be because of deteriorating product quality or outdated business models, not the lack of draconian anti-piracy laws that threaten to undermine one of the nation’s few growing economic sectors.
The scheduled January votes on SOPA and PIPA were called off in the wake of the protest, and the legislation has been put on hold until a suitable compromise can be reached among all parties involved. Similar legislation, however, has appeared in countries throughout the world, including C-11 in Canada and an international treaty, ACTA, secretly signed by the US and 30 other countries, revealed by Wikileaks.
Dozens of the world's foremost websites went down voluntarily today to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the PROTECTIP Act in the Senate (SOPA and PIPA). I won't go into the details of why they are bad (that's on the way), but if you don't know, here's a short and informative video that explains why.
Essentially, this whole argument boils down to the entertainment industry trying to neuter the greatest innovation in human history since the invention of language, just because their hundred-year-old business model isn't quite profitable enough (I mean, besides the obscenely rich Hollywood stars, the movie industry really is in trouble!!). Granted, I have sympathy for people who work in the entertainment industry, but their decades-long war on piracy is just ridiculously overblown.
The protest across the web today, called Blackout SOPA, is really inspiring. It's a powerful example of how forward-thinking companies and communities can band together across the immensely powerful platform that is the Internet and stand up to something truly harmful. It's been remarkably successful, and hopefully it will strengthen our nation's defenses against rogue legislation like SOPA and PIPA.
This is the future of protest.
Over the holidays, I was given a Kindle Touch, something I've wanted for a while now. I've never been a big reader, but this little device might just change that. In the week or so that I've had it, it's managed to turn my attention away from the online articles I normally devour and towards books. And as a kid that grew up with somewhat less than an affinity for reading, the convenience and addictiveness of this Kindle are definitely worth praising.
Design + Hardware
Because it's a touchscreen device, the Kindle Touch can do away with all but one hardware button, leaving behind a beautiful piece of hardware. The body is 6.8" x 4.7" x 0.40". It's very thin—only a centimeter at the thickest, and it tapers off towards the edges. It weighs 7.5 ounces. The screen is an 6" e-ink display with 600x800 resolution (that's 167 ppi, for those of you not interested in deploying the Pythagorean Theorem for yourself). The screen is capable of displaying 16 levels of grayscale.
The ports on the bottom include USB micro-B (note that this isn't your standard "tiny" USB connector, so you probably don't have one, but Amazon provides one), headphone jack, and power button. A home button is on the bottom of the front of the Kindle, and other than those, it's bare. The build feels very strong, and definitely not cheap. This is a solid device.
Wi-Fi is built in, and 3G is an option (a one-time payment, without a contract, provided for life by Amazon over Sprint's network).
Performance + Reading Experience
If there's one area that sets the Kindle above all its competitors, it's where it matters most—reading. The thing that struck me most after a week of reading on the Kindle was how comfortable it was. From reading distance, the text looks sharp on the relatively low-res screen. You can easily see pixels if you look closely, but in practice, the letters look crisp and smooth. The 16 levels of grayscale are enough to make photos look real, not printed. In fact, the only times when the stuff on the Kindle's screen looks bad is when looking at too-small cover art.
The body text in ebooks on the Kindle is set in Caecilia, a professional font from Linotype. In the time I've been reading, I've found it remarkably legible. It makes it really easy to let your eyes fly over the words in books. I'm really impressed.
Thankfully, if the default layout isn't quite right, it can be customized. You can adjust the line spacing, font size, column width, and switch the font to a condensed version of Caecilia or over to sans-serif Helvetica. I'm normally the first person to adjust text settings to my liking, but after trying a bunch of different configurations, I've found that Amazon's default settings are actually the best for me.
Because it's an e-ink display, animation just doesn't work as well as an LCD display. For large changes to the screen, it will flash all black for a few milliseconds before displaying the new picture. Animations have black trails preceding and following them, so there (obviously) isn't much video viewing to be done on the Kindle. This new Kindle generation, however, does not require a full page refresh when turning pages, so the reading experience is much smoother, now that we don't have to be interrupted by flashes of black.
Features
The Kindle includes highlighting, notes, in-book dictionaries, and a new contextual feature called X-Ray on some ebooks purchased from Amazon. Also included are text-to-speech, audiobook and mp3 playback, and a web browser. It's not quite apparent if the browser includes flash (it seems to work on some sites and not others), but the screen limits its use. The browser is also somewhat crippled by its lack of support for multiple tabs or windows.
The battery takes about 4 hours to charge fully, but it lasts seemingly forever after that. Amazon rates it for 2 months with wireless off, or 6 weeks with wireless enabled. The screen is multi-touch, which is great for zooming on webpages. About 3GB of internal storage is available for user content (out of 4GB internal memory).
Unless you paid extra, the Kindle includes ads, displayed on the home screen and when the device is powered off. Ads are never displayed during reading, a very considerate feature from Amazon. They are not very intrusive, and often include codes to redeem free Amazon store credit, so paying to remove them seems to me a waste of money.
The Kindle Touch supports the following formats:
MOBI is the big one here for transferring your own ebooks. The Kindle does not support ePub, but conversion from ePub to MOBI is trivial.
Ebooks not purchased through the Kindle store must be manually transferred to the device, and are not synced between devices by Amazon. Only books bought from Amazon are synchronized in this way, but Amazon will keep track of your reading place in non-Amazon books. If you don't have multiple Kindles (or third-party ebooks), this isn't a problem. Purchased books are transferred to the device wirelessly, over Wi-Fi or 3G, depending on your Kindle.
The interface of the device is clean, simple, and very easy to use. The only complaint I have is that deleting archived items seems impossible. Web browsing, too, is very sub-par, but that's to be expected from an e-ink device. It's marked as "experimental" for good reason.
Verdict
If you're in the market for an e-reader, the Kindle Touch is almost definitely your best bet. For only $99, this new Kindle combines the fantastic reading experience of its predecessors with solid hardware and ease of use that has been greatly enhanced by the touchscreen. It's absolutely worth the extra $20 to upgrade from the non-touch version.
For what it was intended—that is, reading books—the Kindle Touch is phenomenal. Other media (magazines, newspapers, websites) don't work as well in this form factor, but there's absolutely no better way to read a book than this new Kindle.
Score: ★★★★★
Images: Amazon, Ebook Friendly, Engadget, and me. (Fair Use)
[Insert generic statement about how I can't believe 2011 is over already.]
I felt like making a list of my favorite everything from this year. So here it is.
Film
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Directed by David Fincher. Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgård, and Christopher Plummer. Scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
This movie had a plot that grabbed hold and wouldn't let go, no matter how hard you tried to escape the gruesome portrayals of the rapes and murders in Stieg Larsson's awesome novel. The acting was simply amazing, and the soundtrack lent more to this film than any I've seen. Go see it. Seriously. Just don't bring the kids.
Runner Up: Harry Potter 7.2
Album
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming - M83
Anthony Gonzales's latest album is exactly how he described it: "very, very epic." And there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
Runner Up: Wasting Light - Foo Fighters
Mobile App
Flipboard
Flipboard's iPhone app combines beautiful design, great UX, and customized content in a package that's a joy to use. It's without a doubt the best way to read articles on the iPhone. The only downside is that it's only on mobile.
Runner Up: Instagram
App
Spotify
This music client is without a doubt one of the best desktop programs the world has seen in years. It's the kind of thing that you wish you could afford the premium version of. It's awesome to finally have it in the USA.
Runner Up: Firefox 4.0 and up
Activism
Occupy Wall Street
You may disagree with their methods, but there is no denying that the Occupy movement completely swung the national discussion away from an unproductive deficit debate and towards a recognition of the growing financial inequality in America. It was one of the most influential and positive things to happen this year.
Runner Up: the Russian quasi-revolution
Book
Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens
The late debater was almost certainly the most persuasive and intelligent speakers of our time. Listening to him speak, even if he disagreed with you, was a pleasure. This series of essays by Hitchens is almost 900 pages of genius, and an awesome way to remember one of Britain's best. Not to mention, it's nice to see him writing about something other than atheism again.
Website
Google+
The fate of Google's social network has yet to be decided, but it did bring a new spin to online socializing—one that even Facebook tried to emulate.
Runner Up: HTML5 Boilerplate
