It wasn’t meant to be this way. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington understood that one of government’s primary roles is to ensure that all people have access to news and information. And this duty didn’t begin and end with their ratification of the First Amendment. The founding fathers used other strategies — including subsidizing postal rates for printed media and laying the foundation for public libraries — to guarantee that, in the words of Madison, people could “arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.”

…”People are caught in a catch-22: You need a birth certificate to get this ID, but to get a birth certificate you have to have an ID.”…

wilwheaton:

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) claims that SOPA and PIPA are aimed at stopping online piracy. But as this infographic demonstrates, it’s really about fighting innovation.

(Embiggen at Infographic: Why the movie industry is so wrong about SOPA)

I don’t know why, but ok.

anticapitalist:

From Flickr

(via occupyallstreets)

angeliccacophony:

elledark:

Banksy on Advertising

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are “The Advertisers” and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”

~ Banksy

Damnit Banksy I love you so much it’s insane.

(via occupyallstreets)

A president in the last year of his first term will always get attacked mercilessly by his partisan opponents, and also, often, by the feistier members of his base. And when unemployment is at remarkably high levels, and with the national debt setting records, the criticism will—and should be—even fiercer. But this time, with this president, something different has happened. It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong...

“You can either be informed and your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you.”


“It is absurd to suggest that simply because a police officer may have the obligation to keep secret certain information relating to an investigation, that the entire world also must be subject to a coercive force.”