Debt collection agency knew WAY more than it should have about hospital patients’ medical conditions: bit.ly/w4JF6X
— Kashmir Hill (@kashhill) January 20, 2012
According to the City Pages, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Senator Al Franken aren’t quite giving up on the Protect IP Act in the wake of Wednesday’s internet-wide protest. Instead, they say they are interested in a “compromise” that will preserve the bill.
Aaron Rupar from the City Pages calls bullshit, and so do I. Even Michele Bachmann is on the right side of this issue, while Klobuchar and Franken remain anti-internet. Then again, this isn’t Klobuchar’s first piece of anti-internet legislation.
(Representative Keith Ellison, on the other hand, actually joined in the blackout.)
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are currently pending in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. They are ostensibly intended to stop piracy and protect intellectual property. They won’t work. The approach SOPA and PIPA use to combat piracy are like trying to plug holes in a sinking ship with your fingers.
But the music, movies, comedy, and publishing aren’t sinking industries. They are flourishing. People just paid Louis C.K. over a million dollars for Live at the Beacon Theater, and it was protected from pirates only by Louis C.K.’s polite request not to pirate it. Radiohead now sells its albums itself, and thousands of other musicians, writers, and other artists are doing the same thing. But that’s just the thing. No big media corporations get paid that way, so they are trying to buy relevance by attacking the democratizing nature of the internet.
But it won’t work. SOPA and PIPA will be easily circumvented by pirates. What they will do, as Consumers Union, U.S. PIRG and the Consumer Federation of America explain, is encourage consumers to take greater risks online, increasing their exposure to phishing, fraud, and identity theft. They will censor the web without due process. They will stifle innovation and encourage a sanitized internet that looks (and costs) more like cable television than Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter.
SOPA and PIPA will also punish websites like this one, not pirates. Why? As BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow points out, “in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we’d have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site.” That is an impossible task. Instead, many websites will stop linking. Some will go dark. That’s why Wikipedia has gone dark today, along with BoingBoing, Reddit, and many others. That’s what the internet may look like if SOPA and PIPA become law.
All of this adds up to a broken internet.
Why break the internet to protect an industry struggling for relevancy? Contact your representatives in Congress and tell them not to censor the internet. Or take a moment to sign the online petition asking Congress not to censor the web. One more thing: Spread the word. Share it on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.
Whether it’s skipping checkups with your doctor, doing your own taxes, or buying in bulk, chances are good some of your attempts to save money are really just costing your more, in the long run. I’d add “going to the grocery store.” My wife and I started saving a ton on groceries when we started getting them delivered, because there are fewer opportunities to make an impulse purchase on an empty stomach when shopping online. Plus, we save gas, family time, etc.
(HT Lifehacker.)
Another great infographic from the New York Times showing what the 1% do for a living. (Click to visit the interactive infographic.)
As part of their plans to grind Congress to a halt, the GOP swore to block any nomination of a head to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. However, according to the New York Times, the President plans to appoint Cordray while Congress is in recess. The legality of the move is apparently a bit murky, though, so we’ll wait to see how this plays out. (Hat tip to ShortFormBlog!)
Edit: Check out Cordray’s first post on the CFPB blog.
Most “regular” Americans—those making under $100,000 per year—pay about 35% of their taxable income to the IRS. Those who earn more than a $1 million per year pay less than 30%, and the wealthiest 400 Americans pay about 18%, on average. This makes the US tax code regressive: the less you earn, the more you pay.
Guest post from Ashwin Madia.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the constitutionality of The Patient Care and Affordable Care Act in March 2012. The Affordable Care Act stands as President Obama’s signature domestic achievement, promising affordable health insurance to every American. Congress narrowly passed the statute in March 2010 after a heated national debate. Opponents quickly filed suit to have key provisions declared unconstitutional.
Of the four federal appellate courts to rule thus far, three have upheld the law in its entirety while one declared the Act’s key provision—the individual mandate—unconstitutional. This post will discuss the background and important provisions of the Act, key arguments on both sides of its constitutionality, and what will likely prove to be the most important factor in the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision.
Heeding cries of outrage from the internet, Verizon decided to drop the “convenience fee” it planned to start charging for single credit card payments. Look for the cost of future Verizon cell phone plans to rise by $2, which the internet won’t complain about because it isn’t called a “convenience fee,” and everyone will pay it no matter how they pay their bills.
In other news, Spring is still doing the same thing.
