22 very wealthy people will pick the next US President.

This past week, Obama decided to officially embrace a Super PAC to help him get elected when he had previously stated that Super PACS where a threat to democracy.  

Has Obama gone to the dark side you ask?

In a way.. yes.. because it’s the ONLY way he’ll get elected. Period.

The person who spends the most money in an election wins nine times out of ten.

Until recently, there were limits on how much money a company or person could give to a politician for fear of corrupting that politician.  Which makes sense, right?

Well.. the Supreme Court felt that there is no proof that politicians can be corrupted by money (yeah right!).  In their Citizens United ruling, they opened the floodgates for unlimited contributions by individuals and corporations and even allowed the contributors to remain hidden!

Whereas Obama’s average contribution was $55 from individuals over half of all the money that’s gone to the top Super PACS was given by just 22 donors each giving over a half a million dollars apiece.

That means that the next president could be bought and paid for by just 22 wealthy individuals.

Until the law is reversed, Obama has no choice but to succumb to the dark side to get elected.

Some additional reading on Super PACS:

First Read - First Thoughts: A ‘Super’ reversal

Money Wins Presidency and 9 of 10 Congressional Races in Priciest U.S. Election …

First Read - Group wants investigation of Obama, Romney Super PACs

Opinion: Will 2012 be shaped by social media or super PACs? - Maria Teresa Kumar…

Twitter announces new country-by-country censorship.

Last week Twitter announced that it can now block certain tweets from appearing in a country if asked by that country’s government.  On the surface this sounds horrible as Twitter has been used extensively during political uprisings.

Does this mean that Twitter is caving in to these repressive regimes?  Well.. actually no. Here’s why.  Prior to this announcement, countries would just go ahead and block Twitter as a whole. This is exactly what countries like Iran and China did.

Now.. Twitter can exist in those repressed countries, only blocking certain tweets if asked by the governments, but - and this is the most important part - those blocked tweets are still readable outside of the country.

This is actually a good thing as it allows the rest of the world know what is going on in a country rather than to be completely in the dark. In addition.. Twitter also showed that users can change their country in their profile and then be able to see the blocked tweets anyway… shhh… don’t tell the countries though.

So.. by offering this feature, it’s a way for Twitter to still exist in repressed countries.. .. while acting  as a kind of back door to freedom of speech.

Some additional reading material regarding Twitter’s Country by Country Censorship:

Jack Dorsey Defends Twitter’s Tweet-Level Censorship | TechCrunch

Dick Costolo: Twitter Isn’t Looking to Censor Anyone - Ina Fried - Dive Into Med…

Why Twitter’s new policy is helpful for free-speech advocates | technosociology

Twitter isn’t censoring you. Your government is. (Nancy Messieh/The Next Web)

Twitter announces ability to censor content by region

Congressman Lamar Smith, really tried hard to get his SOPA bill passed before Christmas. Over a 2 day period, watching a bunch of really old guys repeatedly state that they are not nerds, try to enact laws that would change the functionality of something as important as the Internet, really pissed off a lot of people.

Thankfully, they recessed over Christmas.. which, allowed the nerds rise up and seek revenge against these politicians!  On January 18th websites like Wikipedika, Reddit as well as 115,000 others, went dark in protest for the day…. even Google censored its logo… and politicians suddenly started to change their minds about supporting SOPA.

Former Senator Chris Dodd, freaked out and said that all the people participating in blackout day were “corporate pawns.”

Oh really Mr. Dodd?  Who are the “corporate pawns” here?

Thankfully the Internet community reminded the 435 representatives that the millions of us voters here are in charge… not a couple of corporations.

So good job everyone.. thanks to you, that piece of legislation has been shot down!

Here are some links to what went down:

The SOPA War: A Frantic Call, an Aborted Summit, and Dramatic New Details on How Hollywood Lost

MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren’t Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought

Petition Demands White House Investigate SOPA Supporter (Dodd)

Now a new battle is in the works:

ACTA ‘Is More Dangerous Than SOPA’

SOPA - The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261)

America is supposed to be a “role model for democracy” to the rest of the world, and recently the Internet has been one of the tools people have used to rise up against their tyrannical governments in their quest for democracy.  So why would we adopt the exact same strategies these oppressive governments use to repress their own people with an act like SOPA?

Here are some relevant links to help you understand SOPA (H.R. 3261) and what you can do to let your elected government officials know how you feel about it:

Google’s “Tell Congress not to censor the web”

Law professors explain what’s wrong with SOPA.

A graphic of how SOPA works.

Find out where your local Representatives and Senators stand on SOPA.

Some resources where you can take action.

My Delicious Link Stack (constantly updated) on SOPA

Here is the text of the video:

Currently there is a bill that Congress is trying to pass, called SOPA which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act which was brought to the table by the Motion Picture Industry who paid the congressmen around $500,000 to create this bill.

Now, this bill, if passed, could destroy the Internet as we know it.

It gives the Motion Picture Industry as well as ANYONE the right to block access to ANY website they decide to take down.

For example, if someone were to upload a scene from the next Batman Movie to YouTube, the studio simply writes an official looking letter and YouTube will cease to exist. Period. No chance for YouTube to remove the video… the website will simply go away.

This is the same process that repressive regimes like China and Iran do keep their citizens in the dark.

So if you don’t want to find yourself living in a repressive regime yourself, click a couple links above to see what you can do..