PirateBay SOPA Press Release

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.

PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

Anonymous Hackers SOPA Statement

Bright, and Clear: The Future of Free Speech

A rallying cry on the occassion of the Web's first mass blackout

As we watch the web go dark today in protest against the SOPA/PIPA censorship bills, let's take a moment and reflect on why this fight is so important. We may have learned that free speech is what makes America great, or instinctively resist attempts at silencing our voices. But these are abstract principles, divorced from the real world and our daily lives.

Free speech is the foundation of a free society. We can have the vote all we want. We can donate money wherever we want. But unless we're able to talk to each other and figure out collectively _what_ we want, those things don't matter.

We believe a healthy society doesn't allow its artists, musicians and other creators to starve. The copyright industry has been justly criticized for abusing the political process in a desperate attempt to maintain its role as a cultural gatekeeper, a business model made obsolete by a digital age of free copies. But the RIAA, MPAA & IFPI deserve our opprobrium for making enormous profits while often leaving the very artists it claims to represent *poorer* than they would be as independents.[1] While the public may have greater access to the few artists deemed sufficiently marketable to gain mass media promotion, fewer and fewer of us are making art and music in our own lives.

It's time we make a stand for a better world - not merely take rearguard actions to preserve a status quo that is _already_ failing us. Accordingly, we present the following list of demands:

• We call on national legislatures to not only reject ACTA efforts to globalize the American intellectual property regime, but to abolish the WIPO.
• We demand the elimination of the DMCA's registration requirement for qualification under the "safe harbor" provision. It's absurd that a website owner needs to mail in a form and pay a $100+ fee to the government to register a contact for copyright violations. A web page at a standard location (a la robots.txt) should suffice.
• We expect courts to apply penalties just as severe to rightsholders who issue abusive takedown notices as those applied to copyright violators.
• No more Jammie Thomases. Any penalties for copyright infringement must be sane and reasonable and not based unsubstantiated, outlandish claims of harm.
• The Department of Justice must begin an anti-trust investigation into the copyright industry, with a specific focus on collusion between rightsholders and ISPs in monitoring Internet users, and payola and cross ownership with mass media.
• We demand an end to sales of radio frequencies into private hands. We hold that spectrum is a form of speech - it rightly belongs to the people and is not the government's to auction off to begin with.
• We demand that ISPs stop interfering with file sharing via BitTorrent or any other protocol.
• We recognize a right of total ownership, not merely licensing, of products we have purchased and a right to tinker and modify them as we see fit. The Library of Congress should not be determining the acceptable boundaries of technology.
• We reject the principle of contributory infringement entirely. While there may be bad uses, there is no bad code.
• We expect legislators and judges to make efforts to educate themselves about the technologies they oversee, and to call on and respect the opinions of technical experts when necessary. The Internet makes nerds of us all.
• All research receiving any public funding, directly or indirectly, must be placed in the public domain upon publication.
• For the sake of innovation and competitiveness, the US Patent & Trade Office must immediately cease issuing software and business method patents, and declare all such existing patents null and void. We unequivocally reject any patents on mathematical formulas and genes or other naturally-occurring substances (human or otherwise).
• Copyright and patent terms must be reduced to reasonable lengths (two and five years from the time of creation, respectively). Works should only be eligible for the length of protection in the effect when created - the continuing extension of terms to protect Disney's ownership of Mickey Mouse must cease.
• We recognize a broad right of "fair use" as essential to a vibrant and creative culture. We will remix, sample, mash up, translate, perform, parody and otherwise create derivative works as we see fit.
• Courts must accord bloggers the same rights as mainstream reporters. The right to a free press originally meant a literal, physical printing press - not membership in some government sanctioned elite. Blogs are the modern day digital equivalent.

We call upon all freedom loving Internauts to join us. We further call upon our legislators, bureaucrats and the media & telecommunications industries to immediately begin implementing our demands. The future of free speech is bright, and clear - either stand with us or get out of the way. [1]

KeepTheWebOpen - Fight Back!

The KeepTheWebOpen site shows how the world may fundamentally be changed for the better... soon.. maybe...

PirateBay and Anonymous SOPA Press Releases originally appeared on AskApache.com

K-Swiss MFCEO Internet Commercial originally appeared on AskApache.com

Drug Dealer Girl originally appeared on AskApache.com

This is part 2 of the exhaustive Htaccess Tutorial. I realized it was so lengthy that search engines and visitors were having real problems with it, so I moved half of it here. But this gave me the opportunity to add a ton of new stuff that I hadn't been able to add to the main htaccess tutorial. And now this new part 2 is already twice as big as the original! To sum up, this is a work in progress.

Moving Half of Original Tutorial to a new URL - SEO Rewriting

Well, the original tutorial was at /htaccess/apache-htaccess.html, but it was such a huge article that search engines were dropping it! So I split it into 3 new urls.

1. /htaccess/htaccess.html - 1
2. /htaccess/htaccess-rewrites.html - Rewrites
3. /htaccess/apache-htaccess-2.html - Part 2

The /htaccess/apache-htaccess-2.html is a lot of unfinished new stuff, and the /htaccess/htaccess-rewrites.html (this very page) still needs to be split several times to get the filesize down.

301 Link Juice

The /apache-htaccess.html url has been around since 2006, and it was full of original ideas and examples for using htaccess. Almost every htaccess guide or tutorial published since then has many of the examples and ideas from that tutorial, (I encourage people to modify and republish everything on this site according to copyright). I know it, the authors sometimes know it, but the main point is Google for sure knows it. That's the beauty of creating unique content, Google sees that. So that /apache-htaccess.html link has extreme link juice, from all the sites, books, papers, and presentations that have linked to it since 2006.

Filesize Is important

I like to use my blog as a way to keep notes about my research organized, and I am extremely good at doing research, unfortunately, that means I have a huge article. The filesize for the html alone is larger than all the other resources like javascript and images, combined.

• So that means it is very difficult to view on a mobile device, or a slow connection.
• For google-bot and other search engine crawlers and robots, this is a huge problem (I made a big mistake letting it get that size).
• The robot has to parse an enormous single html file, containing hundreds/thousands of external and internal links, and its such an issue they can decide to just skip indexing that url until the filesize is manageable.
• Once again, it's all about the human experience, a huge single file is not good for anyone who isn't printing it out to read offline.

Starting Fresh without losing juice

So since the page wasn't being indexed much since it was so huge, I decided to split up the content into new separate urls and utilize a 301 Redirect to transfer all the link juice from /apache-htaccess.html to /htaccess.html.

301 Redirect Timeline

1. Now, the idea is to take the first pages from the original multi-page guide, do a little improvement on that content, and save it to the new url /htaccess.html.
2. Then just continue taking the next page from the remaining original guide and creating new pages using the original links structure. /apache-htaccess-2.html, /apache-htaccess-3.html, etc.. This is a secondary backup to the new /htaccess.html url, which will receive the 301 link juice from the old url, but these secondary pages will help keep the links on external sites good.
3. Then, I setup a 301 Redirect in my .htaccess file to redirect the old url to the new /htaccess.html url.
4. Finally, I delete the old url and it is replaced forever by a 301 Redirect pointing to my new location, filesize problems eliminated.

301 Redirect Code Used

This is so easy to do with RedirectMatch, way faster and easier than using mod_rewrite to handle this, and much less overhead. Note that this is a general command that I will leave up for a few weeks and slowly tighten it up by looking at my Google Analytics and Apache Logs. For instance, this first redirectmatch rule is an older RedirectMatch I still have active to redirect all the old links pointing at /2006/htaccess/apache-htaccess.html to /htaccess/apache-htaccess.html from when I ditched the date-based permalinks back in 2007, and you can see it is a little tighter than the 2nd one which also redirects requests for apache-htaccess.html/feed/ or trackback or whatever.

RedirectMatch 301 ^/2006/.*apache-htaccess.html$ http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/apache-htaccess.html
RedirectMatch 301 ^/.*apache-htaccess.html(.*)$ http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html$1

Advanced 301 Redirects for SEO

I wrote a couple of articles that go into detail about maximizing the SEO with linking and redirects, it remains one of my most helpful articles to anyone trying to rank higher the right way, the Google way.. SEO Secrets of AskApache Part 2

Htaccess Rewrites for Moving Urls originally appeared on AskApache.com

The idea is to have the browser display programming and code similar to the high-quality found on a developers machine, like this older screenshot of my vim.

The most important step is to figure out the font-family and the basic font-attributes. You want to show the best font for those visitors (like me) who have all these extra console fonts, but fallback to a font that anyone in the world can view.

Monospace is the fallback

15.3.1.5 monospace

The sole criterion of a monospace font is that all glyphs have the same fixed width. (This can make some scripts, such as Arabic, look most peculiar.) The effect is similar to a manual typewriter, and is often used to set samples of computer code.

CSS Rules for Code

Here are a few css rules I use. That is my ultimate font-family heirarchy of console-type fonts, though not many people have them installed. The fallback is usually Andale Mono, Monaco, or DejaVu Sans Mono, Lucida Console, Bitstream, then Courier.

kbd, samp, tt, pre, code, var,
.code, .pre {
   font-family: Terminus,Consolas,Profont,"Andale Mono",Monaco,Inconsolata,Inconsolata-g,
      Unifont,Lime,"ClearlyU PUA",Clean,"DejaVu Sans Mono","Lucida Console",
      "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono",Freemono,"Liberation Mono",Dina,Anka,Droid Sans Mono,
      Anonymous Pro,Proggy fonts,Envy Code R,Gamow,Courier,"Courier New",Terminal,monospace;
}

This is just some basic pre attributes, useful as a reset or to force the issue. You may just want to do .pre {...} to apply to elements with class="pre" instead of applying to all pre elements sitewide.

pre { letter-spacing:normal; word-spacing:normal; text-transform:none; max-width:100%; overflow:auto; white-space:pre-wrap; }
pre.normal { white-space:normal }

Live Font Examples

What you see is what you get, so experiment with different browsers.

• Courier
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Courier New
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Terminal
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Agency FB Bold
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Consolas
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Terminus
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Profont
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Andale Mono
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Monaco
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Inconsolata
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Inconsolata-g
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Unifont
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Lime
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• ClearlyU PUA
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Clean
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• DejaVu Sans Mono
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Lucida Console
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Freemono
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Liberation Mono
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Dina
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Anka
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Droid Sans Mono
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Anonymous Pro
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Proggy fonts
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Envy-Code-R
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

• Gamow
  

  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
  |     Type      |      Code     |          A B C D E F G H      |

More Info and Software

• CSS Font Families Example at W3
• Monospace/Fixed Width Programmer's Fonts
• WinFontsView v1.10 - View samples of Windows fonts installed on your system

Programming Fonts for the Web originally appeared on AskApache.com