In solidarity with Reddit and other sites, this site is blacked out today (January 18th) in protest against SOPA and PROTECT IP laws. These laws are a threat to free speech and to the freedom of the Internet. Please contact your congressional representative and tell them to vote 'No' on this law.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is so bad about SOPA and PROTECT IP?

Threat to online freedom of speech

According to the EFF, proxy servers, such as those used during the Arab Spring, can also be used to thwart copyright enforcement and therefore may be made illegal by the act.

On TIME's Techland blog, Jerry Brito wrote, "Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy? Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech?" Similarly, the Center for Democracy and Technology warned, "If SOPA and PIPA are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important—whether restricting hate speech, insults to public officials, or political dissent."

Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard University professor of constitutional law, released an open letter on the web stating that SOPA would “undermine the openness and free exchange of information at the heart of the Internet. And it would violate the First Amendment.”

The AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida, arguing in favor of SOPA, has stated that free speech was not a relevant consideration, because "The First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks."

Negative impact on websites that host user content

Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites like YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar", she says.

The EFF has warned that Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law. According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter.

Christian Dawson, COO of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits.

Conversely, Michael O'Leary of the MPAA argued at the November 16 Judiciary Committee hearing that the act's effect on business would be more minimal, noting that at least 16 countries block websites, and the internet still functions in those countries. Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Italy blocked The Pirate Bay after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and a coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit. Maria Pallante of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.

Weakening of "safe harbor" protections for websites

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in 1998, includes a provision, known as the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, that provides a "safe harbor" for websites that host content. Under that provision, copyright owners who feel that a website is hosting content that infringes on their copyright are required to submit a notice to that website to ask for the infringing material to be removed, and the website is then given a certain amount of time to remove such material. SOPA would override this "safe harbor" provision, by allowing judges to immediately block access to any website found guilty of hosting copyrighted material.

According to critics of the bill such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bill's wording is vague enough that a single complaint about even a major website could be enough to cause the site to be blocked, with the burden of proof then resting on the website to get itself un-blocked. The focus of much of the criticism is on a statement in the bill, that any website would be blocked that "is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation." Critics have read this to mean that a website that does not actively monitor its content for copyright violations, but instead waits for others to notify it of such violations, could be guilty under the law.

Law professor Jason Mazzone wrote, "Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice".

Goodlatte stated, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]".

The MPAA's O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."

General threat to web-related businesses

A news analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek stated, "The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges."

Art Bordsky of advocacy group Public Knowledge similarly stated that "The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it."

On October 28, 2011, the EFF called the bill a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation," and said, "This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed."

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, spoke out strongly against the bill, stating that "The bill attempts a radical restructuring of the laws governing the Internet," and that "It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs."

Lukas Biewald, founder of CrowdFlower, stated that "It'll have a stifling effect on venture capital... No one would invest because of the legal liability."

Booz & Company on November 16 released a study, funded by Google, finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent.

As reported by David Carr of the New York Times in an article critical of SOPA and PIPA, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies sent a joint letter to Congress, stating "We support the bills’ stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ Web sites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. However, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of Web sites.” In response to Carr's article, bill sponsor and Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said the article "unfairly criticizes the Stop Online Piracy Act", and, "does not point to any language in the bill to back up the claims. SOPA targets only foreign Web sites that are primarily dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. Domestic Web sites, like blogs, are not covered by this legislation." Lamar also said that Carr incorrectly framed the debate as between the entertainment industry and high-tech companies, noting support by more than "120 groups and associations across diverse industries, including the United States Chamber of Commerce".

Threat to users uploading content

Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law, expressed concern that users who upload copyrighted content to sites such as YouTube could potentially be held criminally liable themselves, saying, "Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the bill is that the conduct it would criminalize is so poorly defined. While on its face the bill seems to attempt to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial conduct, purportedly criminalizing the former and permitting the latter, in actuality the bill not only fails to accomplish this but, because of its lack of concrete definitions, it potentially criminalizes conduct that is currently permitted under the law."

An aide to bill sponsor Lamar Smith has said, "This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation".

Threat to internal networks

A paper by the Center for Democracy and Technology says that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content."

According to A. M. Reilly of Industry Leaders Magazine, under SOPA, culpability for distributing copyright material is extended to those who aid the initial poster of said material. For companies that use virtual private networks to create a network that appears to be internal but is spread across various offices and employees' homes, any of these offsite locations that initiate sharing of copyright material can put the entire VPN and hosting company at risk of violation.

Answering similar criticism in a CNET editorial, RIAA head Cary Sherman wrote: "Actually, it's quite the opposite. By focusing on specific sites rather than entire domains, action can be targeted against only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain."

Threat to free and open source software

The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern that free and open source software (FLOSS) projects found to be aiding online piracy may experience serious problems under SOPA. Of special concern is the web browser Firefox, made by Open-Source advocate Mozilla, which has a plug-in, MAFIAAFire Redirector, that redirects users to the new location for domains that were seized by the U.S. government. In May 2011, Mozilla refused a request by the Department of Homeland Security to pull MAFIAAFire from its website, asking "Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way?"

Ineffectual against piracy

Edward J. Black, president and CEO of the Computer & Communication Industry Association, wrote in the Huffington Post that "Ironically, it would do little to stop actual pirate websites, which could simply reappear hours later under a different name, if their numeric web addresses aren't public even sooner. Anyone who knows or has that web address would still be able to reach the offending website."

An editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News stated, "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."

Deep-packet inspection and invasion of privacy

According to Markham Erickson, head of NetCoalition, which opposes SOPA, the section of the bill that would allow judges to order internet service providers to block access to infringing websites to customers located in the United States would also allow the checking of those customers' IP address, a method known as IP blocking. Erickson has expressed concerns that such an order might require those providers to engage in "deep packet inspection", which involves analyzing all of the content being transmitted to and from the user, and may raise new privacy concerns.

Negative impact on DNS, DNSSEC and Internet security

The Domain Name System (DNS) servers, most often equated with a phone directory, translate browser requests for domain names into the IP address assigned to that computer or network. The bill requires these servers to stop referring requests for infringing domains to their assigned IP addresses.

Andrew Lee, CEO of ESET North America, has expressed concerns that since the bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries for the sites, this would undermine the integrity of the Domain Name System.

Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, has called the bill "the end of the internet as we know it."

According to David Ulevitch, the San Francisco-based head of OpenDNS, the passage of SOPA could cause Americans to switch to DNS providers located in other countries who offer encrypted links, and may cause U.S. providers, such as OpenDNS itself, to move to other countries, such as the Cayman Islands.

In November 2011, a new anonymous top-level domain, .bit, was launched outside of ICANN control, as a response to the perceived threat from SOPA, although its effectiveness (as well as the effectiveness of other alternative DNS roots) remains unknown.

Internet security

A white paper by several internet security experts, including Steve Crocker and Dan Kaminsky, wrote, "From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific."

DNSSEC

There have been concerns raised that SOPA would harm the usefulness of the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a set of protocols developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for ensuring internet security. A white paper by the Brookings Institution wrote that "The DNS system is based on trust," adding that DNSSEC was developed to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic, and that "other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool."

On November 17, Sandia National Laboratories, a research agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, released a technical assessment of the DNS filtering provisions in the House and Senate bills, in response to a request from Rep. Lofgren. The assessment stated of both bills that the DNS filtering would be unlikely to be effective, would negatively impact internet security, and would delay full implementation of DNSSEC.

On November 18, House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren stated that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on DNSSEC, adding, "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it."

Lack of transparency in enforcement

Brooklyn Law School professor Jason Mazzone warned, "Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation."

Who are my congressional representatives and how do I contact them?

Congress needs to hear from all of us or this bill is going to pass. Each representative usually publishes their phone number, email address, or a contact form on their individual official websites. Links to their websites can be found in these directories:

I don't live in the US. What can I do?

The US State Department constantly speaks out against internet censorship in other countries. Pressure them to speak out against America’s new domestic censorship system.

How do I blackout my blog with this template?

Blogger users:
  1. Download a backup of your original Blogger template FIRST!!! If you do not do this, you will not be able to restore your blog.
  2. Download the SOPA Blackout template from here.
  3. Extract the .xml template file from the .zip file.
  4. Upload the SOPA Blackout .xml template at 8am on Jan 18, 2012.
  5. Upload the backup of your original template at 8pm on Jan 18, 2012.
  6. This November, send donations to the competitors of those politicians who voted for SOPA.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Little Sisters

Confessional
I have three sisters: 2 half sisters and 1 step sister: K, J, and S.

Yesterday I added K's daughter, my niece, to my new Facebook profile--what a doll! I considered adding J yesterday, but I hesitated because she and her mother, M, are Christofacists (my word for Fundamentalist Christians)...and I am a lesbian.

You see, I am the lone democrat in my family; makes sense since I'm the lone queer. Fine. My mother, father, and step-father are conservatives but not hate-mongers. We don't agree on politics and some or all of them may wish I wasn't gay and/or believe I'm gay because I was sexually abused by 4 different people between the years of 4 and 13, but they are decent people with the ability to see gays as human beings just like them...at least mostly. This is not the case for my step-monster and her daughter. They see my sexual orientation as my "lifestyle choice" not simply a part of me as unchanging as my skin color. In short: same story, different person.

So, I hesitated because if I did that then that would probably lead her here and this place is my place to just verbally vomit—so, don’t expect greatness. I’m not writing this blog to impress anyone or hone my writing skills; my fictional writing does the later and I’m not interested in the former. Today I said "fuck it" and added her.

The thing is: I wish we could have a good relationship and that she could meet K and me on the level that we're just women with the same father—sisters—but I'm not holding out hope for that.
Does that make me cynical? Maybe, but if you were me you’d be cynical, too. So, I added her because I should; she is my sister and even though I don’t know her I still love her and wish the absolute best for her in whatever endeavor—whatever makes her happy I hope that it always does and that she lives a far happier life than I have thus far. We all deserve happiness.

This way she can keep up with me...and maybe she’ll read this. If she does, she does. If it hurts her, it hurts her. If she discovers things that she doesn’t know then I’m happy to be the bearer of truth. John 8:36 – “And Jesus said ‘And ye shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.’”

So, here’s some truth:

1. Her mother got involved with my father while my parents were still married. I was a 1 year old baby. I just learned this 3 days ago: that’s how well communications flows in my family.

2. Our father has been married 3 times, not 2 times. My mom was his second wife, something he didn't tell my mom about. As far as I know he was still legally married to his first wife when he married my mom, and at some point she found out. My knowledge of this is still sketchy; it’s one of the laundry list of things I’m trying to discover.

3. I was given less than $5000 from our father for college and made to feel guilty and stingy and unworthy of this money from her mother. J went to school on the other side of the country for $20,000 a year. UPDATE: She owes 20k. They owe nearly 100k. Her mother called K, crying, and said that J would never speak to our father again if he didn't come up with the $$$. The purpose of this conversation was to get K's husband's SSN and to ask if he would co-sign for a loan. The agreement for me was that my mother would pay for the first 2 years and my father would pay for the last 2; if it took me longer then I would have to pay for that. My mom and her husband resented having to take out loans for my education; they are stingy and selfish, self-admittedly. But, they did it and I was able to go, live there, and have a meal plan.
When it came time for my 3rd year and my father couldn't get the money the trouble began. He paid for the first semester, about $3,900 and then he sent me $50 every 2 weeks for food. I had to get loans for the last semester and for my fourth year. Fine; I’ve worked and paid them off myself, but K never got a chance to go to school and no one called anyone crying for me. The step-mother never would have supported me if I suddenly stopped speaking to my father. Nope. Bottom-line: I'm worth less than J and K is worth less than me...except with me. With me I'm not afraid to say that K has always been the only one who ever felt like my sister. She is my sister and the rest are family.

4. M and her mother, C, now deceased, treated me terribly when my ex-fiancé came home for Christmas in 1997. I'll leave his name out of it, but he was a super-fantastic guy with nothing wrong with him. He was me trying to make my family happy, and they gave us Christian books and the cold shoulder for Christmas presents because we lived together and weren't married. Uh-huh.

A few months later we got a package of books and tapes from her church in the mail, unsolicited. Damnation and salvation. He looked at me and asked, “Why are they treating us so differently? Is it me they don’t like?” I had no answers beyond to say that it wasn’t him; it was me. The truth: it is her. A few more months later, the week I left him as I accepted the plain fact that I was more attracted to women than men, I received a card and a letter from M, telling me that if I didn't move out and stop having premarital sex with him I was going to hell. “We used to talk about God” she wrote, “but then you went away to college.” The truth: God was the only thing one could talk to her about and going away to college expanded my horizon, my verizon, and my maturity (the point of it), which made me want to talk about more than one topic.

She’s an Armageddon fanatic; the end of the world has been coming “within the next 5 years” for about 20 years. She had me so freaked out one Easter during my Freshman year of high school that I said good-bye to some of my friends at school of Friday, convinced the rapture would spirit me away before Monday. I waited all day on Sunday, wondering if I was good enough to go to heaven…and too afraid to tell my mom what was wrong with me because I figured she’d get angry. Going back to school and having to face my friends was murder. What an idiot! That’s when I stopped listening to her sermons and warnings of doom; college just helped me begin to find my voice…only a beginning.

This note is the primary reason why I gave up on my family and walked away; it was the last straw. I wrote an inflammatory letter to my father about his wife's actions; the fiancé and a friend had both asked me why he didn’t put a stop to it. After all, I am his daughter not hers. I wrote this letter because I wanted to get his attention. I came out during it and called him a coward. 11 years went by and never a reply from my father. Why? Well, his wife told him a story from the Bible, I believe about the prodigal son—told him to stay away and I would eventually come back. He listened and then he got a phone call 11 years later that I had tried to end my life on 02/02/09. Sadly, that’s the truth and not easy for me to admit.

Does my father want to talk about this? No. It's "water under the bridge." Basically, my father is not only still a coward...he's worse, but I still love him. He says he doesn’t like to pry, but he’s afraid of confrontation and he lets that get between his relationships with his two eldest daughters. J is immune because her mother is there to keep communication flowing. And no: I don't think coward is too harsh: We were alone for 1 1/2 weeks—we drove across the country—and he never engaged me in any sort of meaningful conversation even when I tried by talking about K. I tried to kill myself and he couldn’t find the cajones to talk about this. *sigh* He just won't and that's a big mistake because we'll probably never have such an opportunity again.

5. J sent me a graduation announcement. I replied and sent what cash I had in my wallet. She replied by sending me some DVDs and very kid-like stuff because she's not only immature from being sheltered, she was a kid when she last knew me. I replied back with a letter, letting her know that I was a lesbian. I figured she had been sheltered and was not aware of what occurred. Come to find out: my father says that he didn’t know about his wife’s actions, either. Hmm. I never heard back. She tells K that she wrote back saying "I love you but I don't agree with your lifestyle." Thankfully, I never received that letter because it would have hurt me worse than getting a reply. In my letter I told her not to bother writing back if that was a problem. Personally, I don't believe that she ever replied, but maybe the letter was lost? Uh-huh. Why am I suspicious? Letters do get lost in the mail. Keep reading.

6. When K had enough of our father's BS, she wrote him a letter. M intercepted this letter and didn't show it to our father for over a year! J wrote back and chewed out K, telling her that she had no right to judge our father, that he was a different man, blah, blah, blah. J is 12 years younger than K; she'll be 27 this year. She still lives at home and has never had a real relationship (so I’ve heard) even though she works in media at a huge church: she is the epitome of a sheltered child and since her mother is a latent lesbian (my long-time suspicion) who was still living at home in her early 30s and had never had a boyfriend until she met my father, she doesn't have the first fucking clue about what my sister or I have been through.

That's enough for now. If you think this is juicy, just wait: I got lots more and yes: I plan to plaster is all out there...because I can, because this is my life, because I refuse to allow this bullshit to be summed up to me being a big bad lesbian; and, unfortunately, there is no one here in the state of CA that I can just talk to without it being an argument about something. Also, I will happily be the bad guy for K, who’s going through a divorce, because I know I will never change M and I don't care to because if there's a hell, I look forward to seeing her there.

I will not take the blame for everything. I walked away, never asking for help one time in 11 years, starting out with nearly nothing, having to drop out of school and having to make my own way, in order to protect myself and survive...to learn how to be me and just not give a damn about what they think any more. This is my story and since I’m still alive, I’m going to finally tell it.
Posted by Prodigal Daughter at 4:37 PM
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Corona, CA, United States
How can one chick be so different than her family when she has 3 sisters? I don't know, but I am. Explore more below to find out how. I'll let you decide why.