You're welcome to fire them. Just start your own competing Wiki type organization and stop using Wikipedia. The rest of us will continue to use their fantastic, free service while you work on making yours even better and more competitive.
Intellectual property laws have been repeatedly abused by industry. It's gotten to the point that you can essentially buy extensions on patents through lobbyism. This is more of a problem in the medical industry than in entertainment, but... there are other abuses by media corporations regarding copyrights as well. In effect, if SOPA and PIPA pass, you can expect most user-contributed sites to close or, at the very least, have extremely restrictive rules. You can also expect even forums like this one to become very rare, because part of what's being pushed involves prohibiting linking to news sites. Imagine how pathetic debating will become here when you can't link to the source you're referencing and you can't even cut and paste something without legal fears.
That's what I'm wondering. And I'm one of those musicians who sells on the internet. Maybe they could just pass a law guarding against piracy without affecting other areas, I realize. However....... It's hard for me to not suspect that this protest of SOPA is some kind of overreaction and a paranoid conspiracy prediction by a whole lot of internet users who have unfounded fears of something that's never going to be allowed to happen in the USA anyway.
Cut and pasting might be a problem, but I am surprised if this law would limit linking to news sites. Can you explain why the govt. would want to limit that? And if you can't explain it, then can you quote the part of the law that would do the limiting, please? I would hate for you and I to just be believing the scare tactics of some group who is only against SOPA because it may cost them MONEY, not rights, you know?...
Part of what SOPA restricts is search engines. It basically requires prior authorization for linking to websites with copyrighted material. As you can imagine, this will seriously cripple the usefulness of Google. The same rules that apply to search engines also apply to individuals, however. In order for you to link to a website in a post here, for example, you would technically need permission from the site you're linking to first or risk legal action against you. The following article expands on this idea in how domain filtering is affected by this part of the legislation. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/sopa-an-architecture-for-censorship/
I wouldn't use any encyclopedia for a reference in a University assignment. That's just slack research.
if pornography sites are cited for copyright violations? Does the USA government actually expect me to subscribe to Merilyn Sakova's website? What good is the internet other than to pay my bills, most of which will go away if the internet is censored like China. I can assure that not only will I not work (already in place), I will drop my cell phone, internet and cable TV if SOPA passes.
I had a look and it seemed to be fine, and then it went grey with a message on screen. At least I know what was wrong with it when I last tried it!
I don't think you understand the legislation... at all. That is like saying not supporting execution of people who steal candy bars is supporting theft. If you think of the internet like the highway, this firstly places the burden of policing the people on those who service their vehicles, for no pay. Your ISP/content provider, must now, firstly, monitory your data usage (which I don't particularly think is a good idea), and do so for free. It must then make a value judgment if your traffic SEEMS to be legitimate or not, and then deliver punishment which effectively blacklists you from being able to receive service from anyone. So if your mechanic thinks your wear and tear indicates you speed, rather than the DMV, your mechanic now suspends your license. It is obscenely over simplistic, and overreaching legislation bought and paid for by the MPAA/RIAA and is something any REAL conservative should be fighting with their last breath to fight. The government does not need to regulate the internet. It is the last bastion of liberty, in the Jeffersonian sense, and they need not sink their tendrils deeper into it attempting to regulate piracy. By the way, your gateway will not have people evaluating your traffic. There will be programs determining whether or not you are a thief. There is no judge or jury... there is the cheapest possible traffic evaluator which labels you a thief and eliminates your privilege to freely use the internet. I am a content creator. I am a developer. I am a conservative. My living is made on intellectual property. This is a very very very bad thing. I don't steal... my entertainment library will not be affected in the least by this. However my livelihood might be, because the type of traffic I generate will very likely "look" shady to a program. I live in the linux world. I deal with large torrents, and restricted libraries because of the development work I do. This is an excuse to abuse and regulate the freedom of the internet. You know when the wackos accuse the right of using a legitimate grievance to commit horrors against liberty? This is what that is.
The problem that the big media copyright holder companies fail to realize is people don't pirate because they wanna see ____________ at whatever price people pirate because they are curious to see _____________ and free or next to no cost. If I can't pirate ________ which I say I do like to pirate, I just wont watch/listen/read. If the media companies wanna stop this they can just release poor quality versions of what they sell for free/low cost online and make money via ad space. Then the folks that want a good high quality version with lots of features could still consume that media in the usual way. The people that want crappy bootleg quality can get it from the actual copyright holder, and pay the cheap/free prices that drive them to bootleggers.
Well, yeah. That's what I said. Like all encyclopedias, wikipedia is a starting point for research. It's a good place to start to find out what it is you need to research. In this respect, wikipedia is significantly better than a traditional encyclopedia because of the extensive citations.
There are places called 'libraries' which contain things called 'reference books'. You may have heard of them.
I thought colleges don't allow you to credit WIKI with anything. "Research" on WIKI??? Sorry but doesn't anyone born in the 90s even understand the concept of what REAL research is? Go scouring libraries around the state before computers let you search for it in a millisecond, hunting through old newspapers & magazines on microfiche, going to retirement centers looking for war veterans, then come back and tell the rest of us what actual research is. Hate to sound old, since I'm still in my late 30s but "students relying on WIKIPEDIA...". I thought that gets you an instant F from any legitimate college?
well next time when you want to watch something on youtube or search something on google, don't complain if you can't find what you looking for. or your favor blog/social website is shutdown
ok let see. put on my coat, drive my car 20mins to library, might encounter traffic or not use library PC to find the location of material you need, they may have it or Not, there is a waiting line or the book is borrowed by others, then you need physically find the book, flip through hundreds page to find something you need. check out the book, drive to another library cause current library only has one book you need. do the same process. then drive another 20mins back to your home probably waste about the entire afternoon of your time. vs goto wiki or google, type in search words, click the link, enjoy your soda or coffee or food, talk as loud as you want, blast your hi-fi speaker. total 1min to find the information you need. weclome to the 21st century where the internet is the BIGGEST library in the human history.
Quit hating on Wiki it is a fine example of group intelligence. It has been shown to be more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica in the past. Don't get me wrong if your on the cutting edge of research you should also google it too.
Oh come on! Wiki shouldent replace traditional academic learning. I fail to see how a wiki page proberbly created on a sunday afternoon in some half assed attempt by some bored person to 'educate' the planet will be of any benefit when reviewed for real facts. To test this for yourself, read the wiki pages on geography. Most of it is copy pasted from the cia fact book.
Wiki editors will review anything indicated as sub-standard. This process is only about a quadrillion times faster than writing to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Wiki urges links to supporting material. These links are often invaluable additions to the original entry.
The real problem i have with the growing wiki trend is the laziiness of it all. Research used to take time and hard work, researchers travelling the world educating themselves on their chosen subject or whatever discipline they undertook to write academic papers on. Not anymore, due to the internet anything can be written down in a few minutes without leaving home even their bedroom. With such laziness and only proviiding links to real academic research. How will this inform in years to come? Forget darwin, descartes plato etc.. The new histroical legends will be spotty wiki editors who typed scientific papers or philosophy pages between lunch break and going to the loo.
And far more people have far greater access to a far greater amount of accurate information than ever before. Seems to me, lazy people wouldn't bother looking up information on Wiki, if they were lazy, they wouldn't care to know it.
Do wiki editors really believe they are real academics without any formal education, Now some will be educated to a high level but most wont Ie it has no standards to who updates it, anyone can. If wiki is going to fully embraced the way i read here and elesewhere, it will need a huge over haul to apply quality levels of care to what is written. Yes it is a good experiiment to witness the power of the masses in collective writing but too chaotic currently, untrustworhy until set standards applied.
