All About PIPA and SOPA, the Bills That Want to Censor Your Internet

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are two bills that sound like they have a mildly positive aim but, in reality, have serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. While the Obama administration has come out against SOPA, effectively shelving it indefinitely, the very similar PIPA bill is still alive and well. Both SOPA and PIPA put power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language is vague enough to target sites you use every day, like Facebook and Google, making these bills a serious problem. Here's what you need to know about the bills and what you can do about them.

What Are SOPA and PIPA All ABout, and Why Should I Care?

The idea behind these bills sounds reasonable. They came about in order to try and snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited that many people are downloading their products without payment or permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in support of piracy, against it, or just don't care. The methods are ineffective. Here's what they are and why they're problematic.
SOPA and PIPA were initially designed to do two things. The first was to make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. This would have been bad for everyone because such a measure doesn't actually prevent piracy. The reason that blocking a domain name isn't effective is because any blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address. For example, if lifehacker.com were blocked, you could still find it by visiting a number-based address. In fact, before the bills were even supposed to come to a vote, tools were created to automatically route domain names to their IP addresses to completely render this measure of SOPA and PIPA useless. As a result, the IP-blocking provisions have been removed from both bills.
The other, still-active measure present in the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow rights holders to cut of the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop. Whether that means advertising, links in search engines, or any other listings would have to be removed.
There is, however, an important difference between SOPA and PIPA. SOPA targeted any site that contributed to copyright infringement, even if it was simply facilitating the act by providing a tool that could be used for illegal purposes (regardless of intention). PIPA, on the other hand, requires the targeted site to have no significant use beyond copyright infringement. Basically, PIPA can only be used to censor a site if it's more likely to be a source of illegal content than not. This is still problematic because a tool designed to accept user-generated content is, to some extent, at the whims of its users. If infringing content is found, rights holders already have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to help them request the legal removal of that content. They also have the ability to sue infringers for damages, as we've previously seen with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) when they, for example, sued a 12-year-old for downloading music. SOPA and PIPA provide a means to censor the tool that provided a means for the infringing content to exist on the internet rather than the content itself. This puts a lot of power in the hands of rights holders and has significant potential for abuse.
This is, of course, our interpretation of these bills. Because we love the internet and oppose censorship, we have an obvious bias. While we believe the right thing to do is to oppose these bills, you should make an informed decision on your own. For more information, please read the exact content of both the SOPA and PIPA bills.

What Can I Do About SOPA and PIPA?

Currently Twitter, Google, Reddit, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Zynga, Facebook, and several other sites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA and PIPA. In fact, many sites are censoring their logos (e.g. Google) or completely taking down their sites (e.g. Wikipedia) in protest on January 18th, 2012. There is incredible opposition to these bills because they don't just affect users like you, or small startups, but even very large companies with a large stake in the great things the internet and modern technology have to offer. If you'd like to join in your protest, there are a few things you can do. First, call your congressperson on the phone. This is especially important if you live in a state with SOPA and/or PIPA supports or sponsors. Nonetheless, if your congresspeople do not support these bills you should still contact them to voice your support for their position.
Second, get the word out. Post this article, the American Censorship Day web site, or any other information about SOPA/PIPA on your social media accounts. Send emails to friends and family. If you oppose the bill, help others to understand why you believe they should oppose and encourage them to read more so they can make an informed choice.

Let's End the Fight and Start a Discussion

Finally, if you know a supporter or person in favor of SOPA and/or PIPA, have an open discussion. Myself and many others believe that the root of this problem stems from a lack of communication on both sides. Despite what my articles may suggest, I'm not a supporter of piracy. I do believe there is a compromise that both sides can reach with enough discussion, education, and understanding. It's important to remember that both the supporters and opposers of SOPA and PIPA have legitimate concerns. This should not be a fight but rather a cooperative discussion to find a solution. Whichever side you're on, please encourage a conversation that will move us towards change that is good for everyone rather than extreme measures that won't help anyone.

Is the design of big cruise ships flawed?

 BBC NEWS

Is the design of big cruise ships flawed?

The capsizing of the Costa Concordia has raised many questions about the safety of modern cruise ships. 

They have doubled in weight over the past decade, they sit higher in the water and are flatter underneath to enable them to enter more harbours. To the untrained eye they look top heavy, and with up to 6,000 people on board, they look difficult to evacuate quickly. But is that the case?

One maritime union, Nautilus International, thinks the regulations need looking at. It has been warning for some time that something like this might happen.

Look at this quote, which raises the spectre of the Titanic.

"The grounding of a cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew two weeks into the Titanic centenary year should serve as a wake-up call to the shipping industry and those who regulate it. Attention needs to be paid to existing evacuation systems and more innovative systems for abandonment."

The evacuation of the Costa Concordia didn't go well. The fact that the ship listed so quickly and so far meant they couldn't launch all the lifeboats. Passengers have complained of chaos, confused staff - some of whom didn't speak their language - and the fact they hadn't been taken through a drill.

The International Maritime Organization, which regulates ship safety across the world, sets the rules on evacuating ships and providing drills for new passengers.

Here is what they sent me:

Regulation 19: Emergency training and drills.

• 1 This regulation applies to all ships.
• 2 Familiarity with safety installations and practice musters.
• 2.1 Every crew member with assigned emergency duties shall be familiar with these duties before the voyage begins.
• 2.2 On a ship engaged on a voyage where passengers are scheduled to be on board for more than 24h, musters of the passengers shall take place within 24h after their embarkation. Passengers shall be instructed in the use of the life jackets and the action to take in an emergency.

Effectively, the company has 24 hours to take you through a drill once you are on board. The Costa Concordia was only a few hours into its voyage. Some people arriving back at Heathrow started flashing their drill cards around. They had been scheduled for a rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, by which time the ship was lying on its side.

I suspect, in the light of this accident, all cruise companies will now make sure they drill passengers before they set sail.

But what about the time it took to get everyone off?

Regulation III/21.1.3: All survival craft required to provide for abandonment by the total number of persons on board shall be capable of being launched with their full complement of persons and equipment within a period of 30 min from the time the abandon ship signal is given after all persons have been assembled, with life jackets donned.

In practice, this means all passengers and crew are ordered to lifeboat stations first and then, when everyone is mustered, the captain orders abandon ship. So Coast Guards test to see if ships can load the boats and place them in the water within 30 minutes. 

Regulations also state that a ship's systems should last for at least three hours because that is how long it is expected to take to completely abandon a large ship.

It took a good five hours to get most passengers off the ship. One former sea captain I spoke to had some sympathy with the crew in this situation. Once the ship was listing heavily, he told me, and the lifeboats were sitting on what had become the top of the boat, everyone just had to leave the ship any way they could.

The regulations work to the principle that the ship itself is the best lifeboat, and is designed to be able to limp back to port in most situations.

Prof Philip Wilson at the University of Southampton specialises in ship dynamics and we spoke alongside his 29ft (9m) testing tank. 

"Modern ships are safe as they can possibly be," he told me.

"The centre of buoyancy is in the right place... instinctively it doesn't look right but it is in fact very, very stable, the beam of the boat being very large."

We have also heard a lot about watertight compartments since the Costa Concordia went down. The theory is that if one side of the hull is breached, the other side can be flooded to keep the ship upright. The big question is then, why didn't it work in this case? The truth is we won't know until the investigation is finished.

But Prof Wilson wasn't too surprised, saying: "Every ship will sink if you make the hole big enough."

Latest underwater images reveal previously unseen damage to the hull of the ship

He added, however, that something was "puzzling" him.

The hole in the hull is sticking out of the water. It should be under the sea, because that is where the water came rushing in. In other words, the ship seems to be lying on the wrong side.

"We're working on information that's incomplete so we don't know really what's happened. Potentially of course, the crew could have been pumping water to bring the ship upright, and maybe took too much water on board."

What many people are keen to stress is that cruise ships are still among the safest ways to travel. Companies emphasise that training and regulations are rigorous and that this kind of accident is very rare. But no-one argues that there isn't room for improvement.

The International Maritime Organization has not had a lot to say on this accident so far, but it has released a statement, and once again, it revives memories of the Titanic.

"IMO must not take this accident lightly," it says.

"We should seriously consider the lessons to be learnt and, if necessary, re-examine the regulations on the safety of large passenger ships in the light of the findings of the casualty investigation. In the centenary year of the Titanic, we have once again been reminded of the risks involved in maritime activities."