Re: SOPA, Wikipedia, and dbpedia

Glad you brought up the SOPA issue. While it is logical to want to protect intellectual property (IP) online, I cannot help but feel that SOPA is overkill and in fact will accelerate the demise of the very industries it is intended to protect.

Publishers of music, motion pictures and printed books and periodicals want to hold on to business models rapidly becoming obsolete.

Most consumers have their own views on how to use things in the public domain, e.g. the Internet, and open access, open license and open source models, and models like Apple's iTunes provide new avenues.

The intention of the Semantic Web will be crippled/thwarted by SOPA.

Maybe it is time to come up with an embeddable certification scheme for web sites not based on security certificates but by compliance with non-violation of IP.

And in the name of free speech we need to find the equivalent of "no responsibility for content displayed" when providing links to sites which maybe violating IP rules.

 
Milton Ponson
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________________________________
 From: Mischa Tuffield <mischa@mmt.me.uk>
To: Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 7:58 AM
Subject: SOPA, Wikipedia, and dbpedia 
 

Hi All, 

Following on from the news that the English Wikipedia is going dark in opposition to the SOPA/PIPA tomorrow (2012-01-18) given the activity in the US [1], I wonder whether we as the Semantic Web Community feel like we should turn around and turn off dbpedia? What do people think? Wouldn't that be a nice show of support to Wikipedia, dbpedia's parent project, I think so ...

Obviously dbpedia doesn't have nearly as many users as Wikipedia, but personally I feel it would be a nice show of support, to what is a massive move from wikipedia. Poor students, what will they do tomorrow! 

Mischa

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_to_go_dark 

_____________________________
Mischa Tuffield PhD
http://mmt.me.uk/
http://mmt.me.uk/foaf.rdf#mischa