Although we are leaving our blog live, the rest of the SharedReviews site has now officially been blacked out. We are now displaying an informational page on the dangers of SOPA and PIPA with a 503 Site Temporarily Down status, and will continue to do so until 8pm EST in protest against the dangers of Internet censorship, especially on the scales being proposed in these two bills.
For those who cannot view the informational page, I have re-created it as best as possible here:
SharedReviews Blackout Protest: Please help stop SOPA & PIPA!
You are seeing this page as part of a scheduled (8AM to 8PM EST) blackout of SharedReviews in order to protest against the proposed US House and Senate bills named the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) and Protect IP Act (S. 968).
Below you’ll find a short video and infographic that explains how these bills will stifle free speech and cause catastrophic changes to how the Internet works, all in an attempt to ineffectively protect a few entertainment company’s already profitable businesses on the backs of community content sites like ours. Even though we always try, we just aren’t geared for, and can’t afford to proactively police the use of their content for them, which is what these bills demand of every website and user online.
Thank you for taking 5 minutes of your time to become more aware of this very important topic that affects every one of us.
Every visitor to our site will be redirected to an informational page with video before being allowed access to any of our author’s content. We hope this move will help educate many thousands on the dangers of government imposed censorship, and add to the chorus of voices outraged at attempts by corporate interests to destroy the Internet as we know it just to ineffectively protect their already profitable and successful businesses.
You decide what’s more important; Your freedom or some corporation’s bottom line.
The following is the official Q1 2012 launch schedule of the all new SharedReviews:
February 15th, 2012: Beta Tester Access to the full system. This will include all new interfaces, features, and the new game engine.
February 19th, 2012: General Author Launch with open access for all existing authors. Special prizes and rewards will be made available to all authors in celebration of SharedReviews’ 4 year full launch anniversary, including Amazon gift certificates and a brand new tablet computer! Details and conditions will be announced via email / blog.
March 1st, 2012: Full Launch with activation of all pending signups, new signups will be opened, and the new Author Cash revenue sharing program will be enabled.
A very special Happy New Year and best wishes to all of our authors and readers around the world. In this day and age of consistent uncertainty and apprehension about the future of online writing, we at SharedReviews are excited and hopeful about delivering a publishing platform that will be uniquely fun, educational, and rewarding for writers everywhere. From the ability to perfect your craft, to earning real supplementary income for those that invest their time, we feel the tools we are building will help shape online publishing for years to come. The timing of our release has been long and hard pressed, but based on recent events in the online writing industry, the market needs what we are building even more than we anticipated, and we can’t wait to deliver.
Our progress has been consistent these last few weeks even with the holidays, but like any puzzle it won’t be complete until all of the pieces are put together. We’ve been developing each component to make sure it works with all the others, but as we put the final pieces together some of our tests fail and bugs pop up that need correcting. I can say we’re close, and everyone here is getting more and more excited as things start to come together, but as usual, it’s taking a bit longer than anticipated. I’ll post another update the evening of Monday Jan 9th with dates and timelines for the rest of this very large release.
Again, thanks to everyone for their loyalty and trust that we are going to deliver everything we have promised these last few months. Happy 2012 to all.
At SharedReviews, we’ve always been a big believer in preventing copyright infringement. From checking the first publish of any new member, to providing incentives for authors and administrators to help pull down anything that’s even remotely been plagiarized.
Justice is and always has been both swift and complete; immediate and permanent suspension for anyone who breaks this golden rule.
Currently being considered in the US House and Senate, are two new bills that would change the current dynamic extensively, specifically SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). Although one appears to be much broader than the other, their intention as described by lawmakers, is to prevent online piracy of copyright holder’s intellectual property. That’s all fine and good, we’re behind that 100%, but it’s the way they’ve structured the policing and enforcement that could cause catastrophic changes to the way each and every one of us accesses and uses the Internet, let me explain…
Up until today, sites like SharedReviews have been able to operate under what is called the “Safe Harbor” provision of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), which is the current set of laws laid out to prevent copyright infringement online. What “Safe Harbor” means, is that SharedReviews cannot be held liable for user generated content that infringes on a copyright holder as long as we take down such infringing content as soon as we are notified of it. This has worked out well since it allows any user generated content site to operate without the fear that some rogue user will post something that’s deemed inappropriate for public consumption causing fines, lawsuits, or even the elimination of the site from the global DNS registry (Which these new laws purport as punishment). This would be done without trial, oversight, or any outside monitoring. Some government official would hit a button on a keyboard and an entire website could be completely removed from the Internet indefinitely.
If this law were in effect years ago, there would be no SharedReviews, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, or Google since even a link to infringing content could be deemed as breaking the new laws being proposed. Speaking from experience with Google’s Panda changes, even an unscheduled drop in traffic for a start up can be catastrophic, and all of these companies were start-ups at one time or another. Could you imagine the days when Google was a start up competing with the likes of Yahoo / Altavista and had their site removed from the DNS on a weekly basis? I don’t think we’d have the same search leader as we do today, which means innovation would have been stifled, and 10’s of thousands of jobs wouldn’t exist.
The purpose of this post is to make you think and act;
Think about an Internet where some of your favorite sites were blocked by your Internet Service Provider just because someone posted a comment with a link to a page that was “deemed” infringing, or where only sites with big budgets to hire 1000’s of “thought police” to pre-filter every post could survive. Don’t think that’s realistic? Look at China’s version of Twitter (weibo) which does exactly that.
Act if you are outraged at the fact a small percentage of companies who already make billions in profits each year spent a good portion of that lobbying to enact laws that make them even more profit at the expense of your freedoms and access to free speech.
Although we are Canadian, the vast majority of our visitors and authors are from the US, and this affects us as much as any other user generated publishing platform out there. If you are a US citizen, please help STOP SOPA and PITA now before the Internet as we know it ceases to exist.
Warning: Video contains some mildly offensive language
There’s another website you should check out called “Stop American Censorship” that has even more ways of letting your government know you are against this legislation, and even provides a way to be heard if you don’t live in the US.
Thanks for hearing us out, and we hope that not only we, but our children, and their children get to enjoy an Internet without censorship. With your help, we may just be able to do exactly that.
