A+K

SOPA Is The Problem And Not The Solution.

SOPA Bill is trying to prevent intellectual property piracy which is a legitimate goal, but the way it is going about it will break the Internet and may cause economic calamity.

At its core SOPA unwillingly recruits Internet industry companies like social networks, ISP's and search engines to become policing agents and legally liable for it's users content. Forcing social media sites and ISP's responsible for users content is amazingly burdensome and costly. SOPA will create economic problems for Internet start-ups which will be an additional negative side effect. This may cause a slow down in the Internet economic sector, which is providing real jobs and innovation for the US economy.

DMCA may not be perfect but it does allow for copyrite owners to police it's intellectual property to be removed from web sites by bad actors or zealous fans. Thus removing the legal liability from the search engine or ISP that points to or hosts this content. Yes I understand that this is difficult to manage with overseas web sites, but SOPA as it is written causes more problems then solves.

Moreover, what is most shocking, is SOPA's idea of giving judges determination of Internet DNS. The bill suggests DNS administrators remove bad actor domains on judges orders; thus breaking the fundamentals of the Internet. It is a disastrous precedent to have Congress legislate Internet DNS control.

Placing search engines and ISP's in the middle of policing for piracy is plain and simply a bad and confused attempt by well meaning people that fundamentally don't understand how the the Internet works.

The SOPA bills secondary title is "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.", which is interesting because it almost reverses everything it attempts to do by it's methods of enforcement. I don't support SOPA and I believe we all need to call and write our Congress to help them know we want a No vote on SOPA.

Other Links Worth Reading:

• The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas -
  
  • http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111122/04254316872/definitive-post-why-sop...

• Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works
  • http://motherboard.vice.com/2011/12/16/dear-congress-it-s-no-longer-ok-to-not...

• Dear Internet: It's No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works
  • http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/dear-internet-its-no-longer-ok-to-no...

• SOPA Bill Text H. R. 3261
  • http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c112:./temp/~c1122OD38MStop Online Piracy Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Twitter Management

Up until today, I have posted virtually every one of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual. When I started using twitter, it was a communication platform that people could say what they were thinking in real time and if their facts were wrong the community would quickly and helpfully reframe an opinion. It was a conversation, a community driven education tool, and opinion center that encouraged healthy debate. It seems that today that twitter has grown into a mass publishing platform, where ones tweets quickly become news that is broadcast around the world and misinformation becomes volatile fodder for critics.

Last night after returning home from work, I walked by the television and simply saw a headline that Joe Paterno had been fired. Having no more information than that, I assumed that he had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach. As a football fan and someone who had watched Joe's career move from that of legend/innovator to a head coach that fulfilled his duty in the booth, I assumed that the university had let him go due to football related issues. With that assumption (how dare I assume) I posted a tweet defending his career. I then when about my evening, had some dinner, did a little work, and about an hour later turned on ESPN where I got the full story. I quickly went back on my twitter account and found a hailstorm of responses calling me an "idiot" and several other expletives that I've become accustom to hearing for almost anything I post. I quickly retracted and deleted my previous post; however, that didn't seem enough to satisfy people’s outrage at my misinformed post. I am truly sorry. And moreover am going to take action to ensure that it doesn't happen again. And as an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more deeply saddened by the events at Penn State.

A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible to deliver informed opinions and not spread gossip or rumors through my twitter feed. While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I've come to realize that it has grown into more than a fun tool to communicate with people. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk, I'm going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content. My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that will not happen again.

Term Oil

Barrel

Burn

Boom

Crude

Carbon

Cash

Drill

Diesel

Dollars

Petrol

Pump

Pollution

Sands

Slick

Spill

Tycoon

Tanker

Tax

Gas

Guzzle

Greed

It’s usually about the bottom lines….

Man UP!

Threshold of agony

saturate your doubt with joy.

New arrival awaken

your hiding head.

Crest, it is time…

Your hour has come.

Ahhhhhhh new life,

show your bold fresh face.

Pain bring with you

chance for greater share.

I see  peace!

Finger tips without greed.

Your dollar has no dominion here.

Greatness furiously stands on sidelines

broaching lesser conquests.

“Put me in the game coach!”

Daunting world,

you are no match

for tears.

I feel you, man to man.

Trust you, I'm fine

Fine, I’ll change

I’ll give in

I’ll quit

I’ll admit failure and know that it means I still have a chance

Fine, I’ll surrender

I’ll exit plan A

I’ll move on

I’ll put my loss on display for the world to mock

Fine I’ll listen

I’ll trust

I’ll believe

I’ll embrace my lack of control and give it to you

Fine, I’ll ask for help

I’ll submit

I’ll serve

I’ll be empowered by that which I do not know

What? I’m Fine. Right?

get 1 free

false advert 

get 1 free 

price paid 

on a spending spree

broke bank

split soul

petty purchase

a holy whole

wise ways

rest assured

don't believe

a word you heard

ACT YOUR AGE

Growing up I remember adults constantly telling me to growup and act my age.  When ever I heard this I always secretly thought to myself, "Why can't I just be a kid?" And it always made me wonder what "acting your age" really meant.  I knew a bunch of kids that where my age or even older than I was that seemed to be doing things that were far more foolish than I was.  Mean while I'd see on the news some prodigy that got in to Stanford at 13 and was now a doctor or some kid that was sitting first chair at the Ny syphony orchestra.  All this lead me to ask: How the hell do you act your age?

The more people I meet and the more of the world I see the more I realize that age is really just a function of responsibility.  When you are born you aren't responsible for anything. You can't manage your to find your own food, shelter, or clothing.  You can't even wipe your own ass for that matter.  You are completely dependent on others to survive.  As you enter your teens and adult hood you start to gain responsibility over your actions, choices, and finances until you find some sort of independence.  Then you move into new opportunity and begin to take responsible for your significant other, your job, employees, children, and friends.  Finally you enter a phase where you take on responsibility for those whom you've never met but share similar interest.  But the real kicker is when you gain the courage to take responsibility for the actions of those you disagree with, your enemies, and those who have hurt you.  You start to own their choices as if they were your own because if not today, sooner or later you will feel the impact of their decisions. Once you experience the weight of returning light from each phase it's very hard to turn back or get younger. And when you fail to live up to the expectation which you have once delivered it eats at you a bit and forces you to borrow from your potential self so as to fullfill the "age" you are capable of being.  After all if your enemy drills a hole in their boat we all drown because we are in this thing together.

The world seems to be in a pretty turbulant place right now.  And this world is our boat.  If we see someone drilling a hole we have to patch it and encourage that teammate to consider the actions they are taking.  In some ways growing up kind of sucks.  It comes with swallowing your pride, patience, ridicule, and blame.  But it also comes with a great deal of love, a feeling of earnership, and real freedom.  Sooner or later more of us will need to start acting our age so that some of us will have the opportunity to just be kids.

Bigger beer needed!

Why Fight? It could be YOUR daughter, YOUR niece, YOUR neighbor...

Over the last couple of days I've been in an ongoing dispute with the Village Voice and want to put it to bed.  I've spent the last 2 years meeting with every expert on the issue of Human Trafficking that I can find, reading countless books, meeting with victims and former traffickers, and studying effective international models to combat trafficking.  We are working with the State Dept, the Department of Homeland security, and multiple NGO's. We've built a technology task force inclusive of Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and others.  We've traveled domestically and abroad with the simple desire to help these girls and boys. Our goal has never been to inflate statistics, but rather to inform and inspire the public in an effort to address an issue that has been largely underserved.  And I can assure you it's a big problem everywhere!  From the little boys being raped in hotel rooms just outside of the Atlanta airport, to the girls drugged and trafficked in North Brazil, to the teenage girls pimped at truck stops in the Midwest, to the victims in Russia, India, Cambodia, right down to the girls being forced to sell themselves on Backpage.com.  

I don't dispute nor have I ever disputed that the data around human trafficking is not sufficient, nor do I dispute that sex trafficking and voluntary prostitution statistics are often times conflated. In fact I wrote a post on Quora prior to the Village Voices article stating just that.

While on the Piers Morgan show, when presenting the data that I understood to be accurate, I miss spoke in saying that 100k-300k children are being trafficked in the US.  The data point that I was referring to assumes 100k-300k children in the US are at risk of being Trafficked. I am by no means the authority on Human Trafficking statistics. There is great value in disputing the hard numbers and pointing to insufficient allocation of government spending and this effort would be commended if Backpage.com, which is owned and operated by the Village Voice, wasn't profiting off of the victims at the same time. Due to this, I question the bias data that is being delivered by the Village Voice that will earn 20 plus million dollars this year on Backpage.com, through facilitating the sale of women and girls for sex.

The Village Voice has repeatedly attempted to reduce sex trafficking to an "under-age" issue.  And while they claim to spend millions of dollars fighting underage sex trafficking, they fail to address the countless number of girls that are over the age of 18 and being forced by their pimps and traffickers to post ads on Backpage.com. I have personally had conversations with many of these victims and have heard horror stories confirming this. Furthermore, if the Village Voice and Backpage.com really wanted to combat human trafficking it would create an ID based age gate system that would cost far less than a couple million dollars to build. Why don't they?  I believe their real concern is that it would cost them far more than that in lost revenue if they were no longer to host this illicit activity.  I am all for an open uncensored web.  I support the democratization of media. I don't want to censor the Village Voice; I just want them to stop selling trafficking victims (people) next to couches and bicycles.  I don't believe in companies choosing profits over human dignity.  It has never been my aim to tell an adult woman what she can or can't do with her body, or where she can sell it. I simply desire to help those who are being sold in the sex trade by force, fraud, or coercion. 

Village Voice, you have attempted to discredit the work my wife and I have done to fight human trafficking.  If you don't feel that our ad campaign was effective, that's fine.  If you want to claim that I'm stupid or a bad actor, I'll live with it.  If you want to research the true statistics around human trafficking, I welcome it.  But when you make bias claims in an effort to defend your bottom line, I stand up.  If you make snide remarks about my wife's efforts domestically and abroad to fight human trafficking, I stand up.

You claim that we pal around with Snoop Dogg, an admitted trafficker.  Indeed, we did meet with Snoop and his team and had a very direct conversation about human trafficking.   We discussed how these girls suffer and the potential value that could be derived if he were to publicly stand up against sex trafficking to show pimps, it isn't cool anymore.  

You attacked me about not supporting the Wyden Cornyn Bill:

villagevoice Village Voice  

Dig the poetry, @aplusk, but how about helping pass Cornyn-Wyden to provide teens with actual treatment and drop the myths and censorship?

My foundation has supported and will continue to support: 

You have implied that we are not helping shelters for victims, to which I would encourage you to meet with a couple of the organizations we support, Gems Girls in NY or Cast in Los Angeles both amazing organizations helping countless victims.  The girls there could probably teach you a lot about how your platform was used by traffickers to support their misery.  I might not be doing enough, and I will continue to research and find better data, but I can sure as hell say, "I've never made a dime at the expense of a sex trafficking victim."  Can you?

As for advertisers, it's my intention to continue to make them aware of who you are and what happens on your platform.  They can do with that what they choose.  

Thank you to everyone working to raise awareness about human trafficking.

To support the efforts of the DNA foundation:

http://Facebook.com/dnafoundation

http://demiandashton.org 

Seattle responds to Human Trafficking #dna