Hello Italian Crunching Friends! I see that Santa brought you a beautiful English subsection, so let me use it for one announcement.
As you might be aware, legislators across the globe are working on implementation of new laws, which are putting more restrictions on Internet and citizen freedoms within it. In Europe, the main problem is a trade agreement called ACTA, which intends to by-pass national laws and reduce civil rights. On the other hand US Government passed ACTA and now further laws like SOPA or PIPA are being considered.
Because of these laws, a number of services are going to protest against the new legislature. This is a wide movement, including not only numerous Free/Libre/Open Source Software and civil rights sites, but big names like Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla, Reddit&ArsTechnica as well.
My team, BOINC@Poland, and our affiliated project Radioactive@home are supporting the protest.
Our side portal
www.boinc.com.pl
will be blacked out, and the main services like
www.boincatpoland.org
and
radioactiveathome.org/pl/
will highlight our message.
We invite all the projects, BOINC teams and volunteers to support the protest, in a way you feel would be appropriate.
Just let me pass the ask of a sysop of Radioactive@home:
Welcome
Because of acceptance of ACTA agreement, and also other attempts of forcing legal solutions targeting increase of legal control over internet, administrators of Radioactive@home decided to place note of protest on the project site, with the following information.
"With regard to the ACTA (so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) accepted by European Union, we feel obliged to warn you that our website may be unavailable in some countries soon.
ACTA Agreement was initiated by organizations describing themselves as "defending artists from bad pirates" and has been enforced on EU in secret negotiations initiated by US Government. Non government
organizations from all over the world agreed on condemning both the way of negotiations ware taken and allowing by this agreement cutting off websites "uncomfortable" for governments of countries that
signed ACTA, without proving infringements of any laws."
We would like Your project to join this action. We plan to publish this note on Wednesday 18.01.2012 on 0.00am.
Regards,
Krzysztof 'krzyszp' Piszczek
As far as I know, Krzysztof plans to highlight his message for three days. The action may be repeated.
Sorry for writing you that late - we don't have any professional PR Agency yet
and we are pretty busy with our lives and BOINC already. :] But please, feel invited to join or express your concerns!
Best Regards to you all and happy crunching,
aegis maelstrom
BOINC@Poland