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The SOPA (on a rope-a) thing
Jan. 18th, 2012 10:08 amToday, I am not posting a link to any of the anti-SOPA stuff. I am not going to change my icon, or black out my text. I am not going to go to Wikipedia or bother to look for any of the hundreds of other sites out there with protest messages or black screens.
Why?
Because I am not American. Oh, don't get me wrong. To all of my friends and followers in the US: Please, DO go and write your senators or elected officials. DO blank out your websites in protest. DO Make your voices heard.
As a Canadian, however, I have no voice in the politics of the United States. I have no one to write to to make a difference. I have no say in how things should be done. So I am not blanking out my data.
I WILL however, speak my mind. The United States, via it's congress and it's media conglomerates are attempting to impose a global law. They are trying to impose their own laws on sovereign nations. This is something I cannot just sit by and abide. You see, Michael Geist put it best:
[...] the SOPA provisions are designed to have an extra-territorial effect that manifests itself particularly strongly in Canada. As I discussed in a column last year, SOPA treats all dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domain as domestic domain names for U.S. law purposes. Moreover, it defines "domestic Internet protocol addresses" -- the numeric strings that constitute the actual address of a website or Internet connection -- as "an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district of the United States.
Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). Its territory includes the U.S., Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes. To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.
My website is not American. My blog is not American.
I am not a citizen of the United States.
If your laws are going to have the ability to impact me, and my life, then I should have the right to vote on them and have my say. To have your nation unilaterally decide what is and isn't legal for my nation is tantamount to oppression through politics, invasion of private property, and just a crappy thing to do.
So please, Americans, stand up to your politicians.
That's all.
Why?
Because I am not American. Oh, don't get me wrong. To all of my friends and followers in the US: Please, DO go and write your senators or elected officials. DO blank out your websites in protest. DO Make your voices heard.
As a Canadian, however, I have no voice in the politics of the United States. I have no one to write to to make a difference. I have no say in how things should be done. So I am not blanking out my data.
I WILL however, speak my mind. The United States, via it's congress and it's media conglomerates are attempting to impose a global law. They are trying to impose their own laws on sovereign nations. This is something I cannot just sit by and abide. You see, Michael Geist put it best:
[...] the SOPA provisions are designed to have an extra-territorial effect that manifests itself particularly strongly in Canada. As I discussed in a column last year, SOPA treats all dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domain as domestic domain names for U.S. law purposes. Moreover, it defines "domestic Internet protocol addresses" -- the numeric strings that constitute the actual address of a website or Internet connection -- as "an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district of the United States.
Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). Its territory includes the U.S., Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes. To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.
My website is not American. My blog is not American.
I am not a citizen of the United States.
If your laws are going to have the ability to impact me, and my life, then I should have the right to vote on them and have my say. To have your nation unilaterally decide what is and isn't legal for my nation is tantamount to oppression through politics, invasion of private property, and just a crappy thing to do.
So please, Americans, stand up to your politicians.
That's all.