Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Wikipedia is out of bounds today, participating in a global protest against the proposed SOPA bill that threatens our civil rights. And yet, I’m not so sad seeing Wikipedia’s black page after each search query.

You see, centralized sources of information aren’t really a good thing. Free or not, Wikipedia has somehow become an authority on people’s online research; whether you type the URL in or after searching in Google, Wikipedia articles maintain top relevancy.

Even when they are inaccurate!

I grew up in a home that encouraged research; my father owned more than 5,000 books from philosophy to astronomy, but not a single standard, multi-volume encyclopaedia. The only thing close to that was probably Le Petit Larousse.

In the 70′s, the “dream” of a grade school student was exactly that abomination: the multi-volume encyclopaedia. It sounds anecdotal but it’s entirely true: when asked to compose an essay, a friend cut out images and text from this precious, 20-volume strong encyclopaedia, then pasted them with glue onto the school book he presented to the teacher. In 1978, that was probably a pioneer act of “cut and paste”.

For that matter, I would like to see Wikipedia stay down longer, be it in protest of SOPA or for  some other reason. Students and others need to learn to do research, versus copy and pasting or plagiarism.

And never trust a single point of authority or one day it might go down along with your trust and dreams.

A few days ago I reported on how the domain name SOPA.com is in good hands.

To show my support of Vincent’s efforts against this hideous SOPA bill, I’ve donated my time and created the SOPA.com logo.

The SOPA bill must fail because it’s not only unconstitutional but it also threatens to destroy the Internet functionality and unity.

Visit SOPA.com – have a wonderful Friday.

Aged “just” 74 years and six months, senator Jay “John” Rockefeller is still keeping America safe from its natural enemies.

In a letter published at the Talk Radio News Service, senator Rockefeller made this statement:

“I’m concerned that this expansion of generic, top-level domains, if it proceeds as planned, will have adverse consequences for the millions of American consumers, companies, and non-profit organizations that use the Internet on a daily basis,” Rockefeller wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary John Bryson and NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling.

Senator Rockefeller is unique, in the sense that he’s the only Democrat in a long family line of Republicans, including his great-grandfather, self-made oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller.

And that’s where the party ends, I’m afraid.

There is no way to stop progress and the Internet will have to expand, despite the narrow minds of some. New gTLDs will be introduced and new methods of accessing and sharing data and information. The river cannot reverse its flow, as they say.

With the involvement of aged politicians, being lobbied by corporate conglomerates to implement satanic instruments, such as the SOPA bill, we should realize that having our grandfathers run the show isn’t a smart idea after all.

The ‘SOPA’ buzzword will remain alive through the holiday season and beyond, especially since the Congress has yet to decide on the fate of the bill by the same name.

The “Stop Online Piracy Act” gives controversial authority to the US Government to take down any web site and content it deems infringing or unlawful, without a due process.

It seems that SOPA.com is owned by a great gentleman of a domainer that I had the pleasure to engage in business with and whom I commended in a prior post.

Vincent owns SOPA.com and has plans to build it into an informational web site and to give visitors the opportunity to raise their concerns about the SOPA bill and its ramifications for the Internet and the domain industry.

With large corporations like GoDaddy flip-flopping on the SOPA issue, there seems to be a need now, more than ever, for a centralized point of defense against unconstitutional legislation – and SOPA.com is the right URL to do it from.