WTF Government?!

After the Internet's decisive victory over the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this month, online activists have been looking for their next target, and a growing number of them have chosen the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was signed by the EU last week. Indeed, the renewed focus on ACTA even led a group of Polish politicians to hold paper Guy Fawkes masks—the symbol of Anonymous—over their faces in protest at the way ACTA has been pushed through. In the US, over 35,000 people have signed a petition urging the White House to "end ACTA," despite the fact that it has already been signed by the US. Rest here.

They have so many backup plans to ruin our freedom on the internet. Like why do they have to control everything, even our digital lives. First it was SOPA and PIPA in the US, and now it' ACTA all over the world, this act is almost the same as SOPA and PIPA but on a much, much larger scale. The United States has already sign this. What would we do?

Everybody hates ACTA.

The European Parliament’s independent monitor for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) resigned Friday in protest after 22 European Union member states signed the anti-piracy treaty Thursday.
According to the BBC, Kader Arif said that he condemns “the whole process which led to the signature of this agreement: no consultation of the civil society, lack of transparency since the beginning of negotiations, repeated delays of the signature of the text without any explanation give, reject of Parliament’s recommendations as given in several resolutions of our assembly.” Rest is here.

Say no to ACTA.

This is epic!

Poland on Thursday signed an international copyright agreement, sparking more demonstrations by Internet users who have protested for days over fear it will lead to online censorship. Rest is here

A tank like this one from Rusbal's Rusdecoy line sat on the front lawn of Dotcom Mansion

Flight risks, firearms charges and an inflatable tank are just some of the latest wrinkles in the bizzare case of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. After his arrest, Dotcom's mansion received delivery of a full-size inflatable replica of a Russian T-72 tank, which is now parked in front of the "Dotcom Mansion" and is busy infuriating the upscale neighbors. The T-72 "Threat Decoy" is similar to those used by the military for field training and intelligence deception, manufactured by companies such as Inflatable Images in the US and Russia's Rusbal; Rest is here. lol

Battle rages on!

Founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom was denied bail in Auckland, New Zealand yesterday January 24, 2011. New evidence shows that he had already had a "Criminal" background were he tells his neighbors over email how he was already a computer hacker but that was all in the past, and he comes in peace.

U mad bro?

 

Now we just have to wait and see what happens to the founder of MegaUpload, will he be set free or be taken and arrested by the US government.

Music industry takes down MegaUpload.

Last Thursday the US Justice Department came down hard on Megaupload and its mega founder, Kim Dotcom. In the days since, there has been a shake-up of sorts in the digital storage realm. Several smaller sites have drastically changed their business models. Others, like MediaFire, reached out to me after I published this post attempting to distance themselves from Megaupload.
However, yesterday, a new theory surfaced that indicates Megaupload’s demise had less to do with piracy than previously thought. This theory stems from a 2011 article detailing Megaupload’s upcoming Megabox music store and DIY artist distribution service that would have completely disrupted the music industry.
 Article by: Matt Burns. Rest is here.

Original.

So we can say wow, not only can't the music industry have any other sort of competition that can make them lose money, they will also go out of their way to make sure no one intervenes in their plans. Apparently MegaUpload had a upcoming service called "MegaBox" in which artist would get paid to upload their own content and sell it to consumers, not only that people could also get paid by distributing their own music for free, you could get paid y uploading your own free music!. The music industry is not very fond of this, as it can disrrupt their business, this service would allow artist to keep up to 90% of the money which is obviously something you as an artist would definitely benefit from.

The internet has been crippled.

Original.

Now that MegaUpload has been taken down, other similar sites are taking counter measures. They are removing most files from their databases resulting in a vast amount of information being lost. Video indexing websites are suffering greatly from this as most of the content they once shared is no longer available. And to find the same quality material on other trusted and safe websites is a hassle. Now we come to an age where everything is done underground, it's not like people are going to stop uploading copyrighted content, now it's just more illegal to do so.

So we won right?

Wrong!, Soon after the SOPA and PIPA bills were denied and voted against, the feds just happen to shut down, without any prior notice, one of the most biggest file-sharing websites on the internet, Megaupload; Generating about 4% of the total bandwidth traffic on the entire internet, Megaupload was a giant.

RIP MegaUpload. Original photo.

But the internet wont go down without a fight, The "Group"  called "Anonymous" launched an attack "within minutes of the site being shut down, and DOJ releasing its statement, Anonymous sprang into action and started taking down a ton of sites -- including websites for the DOJ, the US Copyright Office, Universal Music, the RIAA, the MPAA and a bunch of other sites.

Department of Justice (Justice.gov)

Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA.org)

Universal Music (UniversalMusic.com)

Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (Anti-piracy.be/nl/)

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA.org)

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI.gov)

HADOPI law site (HADOPI.fr)

U.S. Copyright Office (Copyright.gov)

Universal Music France (UniversalMusic.fr)

Senator Christopher Dodd (ChrisDodd.com)

Vivendi France (Vivendi.fr)

The White House (Whitehouse.gov)

BMI (BMI.com) 

Warner Music Group (WMG.com)"

                                                                Rest of blog is here.

Obviously the government has done something which they have not thought through enough, they have disturbed a beehive and now its out to sting them, and sting them they have. From the looks of it i could guess that things could get only worse, with more and more websites removing their content and more websites being taken down, these people will not sit still and see it all be taken away from them, from us. They turmoil will continue and like a double edge sword they will keep hurting each other, by the time they are down to bones there would be nothing for us to hold on to, the internet as we know it will be long gone. So r u mad?

So are u mad bro?

With the recent SOPA and PIPA bills being voted against, we the people seem to have come to a celebration. In which we smile and laugh at the government for attempting to pass such stupid and business crippling bills that these two are. After many months of  running around and telling everyone that if these bills were to pass, there would be no hope left for us, because the internet as we know it will seize to exist. We finally got together and voted against this pest.
But many had no clue what this bills would do to us, how they would hinder our productivity and even worse, threatened our freedom of speech. Others just thought it was what it said on the surface, stop the online pirating of copyrighted works, which would benefit the artist and musician that work hard to deliver them to us. Sounds great right?, well there is a catch, aside from not being able to share any copyrighted material with someone else, you wouldn't  able to do most regular things on the internet anymore. Not just that the amount of unemployment from people who wouldn't even exist without the freedom that the internet has to offer, would skyrocket. Things like Machinima, Reviews, user gameplays, Animated Music Videos, etc, would be considered a crime, you could go to jail for putting up a video of a game that you bought!. Users wouldn't be the only ones affected by this, websites like Youtube, DaylyMotion, MetaCafe, Break, etc, would suffer greatly, as most of their revenue come from user generated content, and advertisements, removing these would mean a big chunk of money would  be lost from the economy, making it even worse.