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Sal Khan explains SOPA / PIPA
- kamens 15y agoSal showed up at our weekly company picnic/lunch today and said something like, "All these sites are down cuz of SOPA, but everything I read is still so hard to understand," so he dove in and made this this morning. Pretty cool.
- wtvanhest 15y agoCongress should hire him to explain to them all the laws they are creating.
- WestCoastJustin 15y agoPersonally, I think this is exactly what is needed. My girlfriend and I are home from work today because of a snow storm, and she wanted to check out thechive.com, but they are down protesting SOPA. I was explaining to her what SOPA is, and why I think it is a bad idea. She didn't want to read pages of material or call someone since we don't live in the States. I could have just pointed her to the 10 minute video and let her see for herself.
- kmfrk 15y agoI find it really disappointing that the informational response to SOPA has been quantitative and not qualitative. Everyone and their dog have made (1) an infographic, (2) a video, and (3) a black-out or banner script. This only serves to underscore what so many people don't get most of the time: the availability of information is not binary nor an issue necessarily aided by a proliferation of resources on the matter. We see the same thing when we are teaching ourselves and others programming and git(!), and we would do well to see our failure to educate people on something so many intelligent and affluent people in technology oppose as a wake-up call in this issue and all other issues that depend on our ability to explain them and bring them to people's attention. It's a perfect coincidence that we needed Sal Khan of all people to show us this - once again.
- marshray 15y agoOooh oooh! Brilliant! Do you think we can get him to do a module on git?!
- swalsh 15y agoI am convinced that Sal Khan's contribution to education is so significant his work will be used in classrooms generations from now... though perhaps in the form of some kind of technological derivative. So congrats! You just had lunch with the historical equivalent of Einstein.
- rhizome 15y agoThe guy really deserves some kind of recognition, but I don't think there's a Nobel or Pulitzer for education (telling).
- ececconi 15y agoI think that he's got some great recognition. The Nobel and Pulitzer aren't the only way to do that.
- rhizome 15y agoyes he has, but probably deserves more.
- lincolnq 15y agoThe Nobel Prize has a famous chilling effect on actual productivity. It's good to give people recognition for their work but I would be wary of giving them too much.
- rhizome 15y agoThat's an excellent point, one that is illustrated in the book, "Punished By Rewards." http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
- felipemnoa 15y agoPeace Prize? It could be argued that a better educated world is more likely to move towards peace. Allows people to be more critical thinking and thus not allow themselves to be fooled so easily by politicians.
- Lewton 15y agoShows how effective khanacademy.org is when, after watching the entire video, I discovered I wasn't logged in and was disappointed I wouldn't get my points!
- corysama 15y agoThe Vision of the Gamepocalypse is coming true. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NzFCfZMBkU&t=2m10s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NzFCfZMBkU&t=2m10s
- stcredzero 15y agoGamepocalypse already happened. Money is just a point system.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- solipsist 15y agohttp://bjk5.com/post/14059107433/after-giving-logged-out-users-access-to-pretty-much http://bjk5.com/post/14059107433/after-giving-logged-out-use...
- koops 15y agoAll the blackout banners should link to this video.
- melvinram 15y agoIt's a YouTube video. They can just embed it on the page.
- thelema314 15y agoA very nice video, except the particular passage referred to has the clause "designed for..., has only limited purpose or use other than, or is marketed for..." violating various laws. I don't think any of his examples would fall under any of these categories.
- aero142 15y agoI find it disturbing that even though I am still against SOPA and the likes, that the opposition seems to be willfully ignoring this portion. Unless I am totally misreading it, it would be very difficult for the likes of Youtube or Facebook to be included. The language is still dangerous though, because the designed for clause seems to open things up. I can easily see BitTorrent being brought in to be "designed for" downloading illegal movies, because judges aren't likely to think downloading linux distributions is very significant alternative use. The thing that concerns me is that smaller companies or companies outside of the mainstream might not get much credit for having other purposes. Imagine if reddit had r/stealmovies, a judge might not care much about the rest of it if there are thousands of people using it to talk about infringing. There is enough wrong with this bill to oppose it without resorting to hyperbolic threats. edit: Thinking about it more, youtube might be a great example. Current youtube won't be brought down with this, but youtube in it's infancy very well might have been stomped out. Imagine explaining to a Judge, "no, you don't understand. Right now it might be used for mostly unauthorized music videos, but showing home videos of cats is going to be HUGE!"
- pemulis 15y agoThe important part, as the video points out, is the phrase "enables or facilitates." Google, Facebook, Youtube, and other sites that either allow user-generated content or generate links through web crawlers are "offering goods or services in a manner that (...) enables or facilitates [copyright violations]." Since linking facilitates copyright violation, this affects every site that doesn't manually vet every single link it makes.
- toyg 15y agoThe problem is actually with the definition of infringing site: "The term 'U.S.-directed site' means an Internet site or portion thereof that is used to conduct business directed to residents of the United States". By this definition, a Youtube channel of people posting rickroll mashups and served, say, under a .fr domain, without paying Rick Astley, would make Youtube an infringing site as a whole. A Google group dedicated to memes based on captions of The Hurt Locker and served under the .za domain would make Google an infringing site as a whole. A subreddit dedicated to... you get the idea.
- nextparadigms 15y agoLinking is not a crime. If we'll ever make any "Internet Freedom" laws or Constitutional Amendments, that definitely needs to be in there. The 1st Amendment should already cover linking as speech, but apparently MPAA/RIAA and some in Congress disagree.
- CamperBob 15y agoLinking most definitely is already a crime in the US. The time to protest it was eleven years ago: http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/299 http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/299 Every move in defense of liberty on the Web since then has been a rear-guard action.
- mr_luc 15y agoIt would make sense to have this as a central tenet of internet protection legislation.
- crististm 15y agoI thought I knew how creepy SOPA/PIPA are
- samstave 15y agoWe need S.O.P.A: Stop Outrageous Political Assholes. Did anyone here see the letter from the CEO of the MPAA (who happens to also be a senator) chriss dodd today, which said that this SOPA blackouts are a gimmick and that we are corporate pawns for blacking out in protest? Is it enraging to anyone else that he is allowed to be the CEO of the MPAA AND a senator at the same time where he can both write and benefit from legislation in his interests?
- tzjames 15y agoActually Chris Dodd is a former Senator of Connecticut. His term ended in 2010.
- jfarmer 15y agoHe lost the election in 2010, but his term ended in 2011. He became CEO of the MPAA two months later.
- thebigshane 15y agoUnited States Senator from Connecticut In office January 3, 1981 – January 3, 2011 On March 1, 2011, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that Dodd will head that organization He's not a senator anymore and was never senator and MPAA Chairman at the same time. I know wikipedia is "down" so it's harder to check facts. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd?banner=false http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd?banner=false]
- samstave 15y agoThanks! I have heard his name enough in the media recently, associated with the credit crisis, as referred to as senator, that I hadn't realized he was out. Still does not reduce my level of disdain for him.
- niels_olson 15y agoBetter permalink to Sal Khan's explanation of SOPA http://khanacademy.org/video?v=tzqMoOk9NWc http://khanacademy.org/video?v=tzqMoOk9NWc
- spicyj 15y agoThere's nothing wrong with the original link. (I'm KA intern/part-time and the submitter is a full-time KA dev.)
- niels_olson 15y agoI didn't realize the organization had a plan to shephard quirky links indefinitely
- digvan 15y agoWe are hosting a discussion about #SOPA tonight at TooTchat. Come and join us. http://bit.ly/AiomgP http://bit.ly/AiomgP
- dlikhten 15y agoSal, hope you are on HN because I have to say, you f-ing rule. I don't think anyone could have done a better job explaining it.
- crististm 15y agoso using ssh would be now illegal?
- omarv 15y agoWhat is the most practical way to send this video to the members of Congress so they can become better educated on the ramifications of these bills?
- EGreg 15y agoOnce again Salman Khan explains what needed explaining to many people. However, SOPA has changed since then and now * specifically only applies to foreign sites * excludes the DNS cutoff It is still "flawed", as Darren Issa says, and I think the OPEN act, deputizing the ITC is actually way better. It would first offer the offending foreign sites a chance to enter into arbitration before taking any unilateral action against them by the USA.