It seems that the threads to the freedom of speech of ordinary people and there ability to earn an honest living is even bigger then the struggle against SOPA suggested.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Learn more and take action about ACTA at
http://lqdn.fr/ACTA
(subtitles included : fr, en, es, de, it, nl, se, pt, ro, ca, hu, gr, …)

Here are few ways to act against ACTA, right now:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/How_to_act_against_ACTA

Ongoing translation and subtitling efforts:
https://pad.lqdn.fr/p/trad-video-acta

Full script:

Can you imagine your Internet Service Provider policing everything you do online?
Can you imagine generic drugs that could save lives being banned?
Can you imagine seeds that could feed 1000′s being controlled and withheld in the name of patents?

This will become reality with ACTA.

ACTA is the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
Disguised as a Trade Agreement, ACTA goes much, much further than that.

For the past 3 years, ACTA has been negotiated in secret by 39 countries.
But the negotiators are not democratically elected representatives.
They don’t represent us, but they are deciding laws behind our backs.

Bypassing our democratic processes, they impose new criminal sanctions to stop online file sharing.

ACTA aims to make Internet Service & Access Providers legally responsible for what their users do online, turning them into Private Copyright Police & Judge, censoring their networks.
The chilling effects on free speech would be terrible.

In the name of patents, ACTA would give large corporations the power to stop generic drugs before they reach them people who need them, and stop the use of certain seeds for crops.

The European Parliament will soon vote on ACTA.
This vote will be the occasion to say no once and for all to this dangerous treaty.
As citizens, we must urge our representatives to reject ACTA.

NO TO ACTA.

Learn more, Take action
www.lqdn.fr/acta

A film directed by
Benoît Musereau
www.benoitmusereau.com

Script by
La Quadrature du Net

Animated by
Morgan Dupuy

Designed by
Marion Leblanc

Voice by
Axel Simon

Music by
Mawashi
www.mawashi.fr

La Quadrature du Net
CC-By-SA 2011-10
http://lqdn.fr/acta
Category:
News & Politics
Tags:
ACTA Copyright Police Trade Agreement Sharing Internet seeds Generic Drugs Educational
License:
Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

Tomorow is stop SOPA day.
If the plugin does what it is supposed to do you’ll find this website
replaced by one page contain something like the story below:

Stop SOPA

Click here to view the embedded video.

So why am I joining in with this protest.
How could American law hurt a tiny website written by someone living in the
Netherlands.

Well, I’m no legal expert.
But as I understand it, this law could be used to black out any website
anywhere in the world. That means that this kind of law can be used to
blackmail sites out of existent.
Having the ability to send a take down notice without having to prove to a
judge that a site is infringing on your copyright or even that you own the
copyright. Means that any American can use this law to make money.

Nowadays there are already little companies who earn their money as copyright trolls.
If this bill comes into law, domain trolls will send thousands of take down
notices to every .com .net and .org domain owner on the planet demanding to
pay for copyright infringement or else they will shutdown your site.

Even if the domain owner can prove that he isn’t infringing on someones
copyright his domain still could be shut down.
And off course, as is always the case with black mail, there is no limit to
the amount of take down notices one domain owner could get.
I could get thousand of take down notices a year.

In the worst case I could of course register henkterheide.nl (actually I
have, just in case).
But having a Dutch domain isn’t the same as having an .com domain.
I like to write in English and I like the thought that people all over the
world read my words.
Dutch domains are expected to be in Dutch. And although there are people out
side the Netherlands that can read Dutch.
They don’t visit Dutch sites.

I can only share my stories with the whole world if the American Government
is prevented from creating this kinds of laws.

Serendipity – The interesting stuff you find while looking for something else – must be one of the best words in the English language.
It’s also a necessity on the internet.
How else would you find all those interesting sites you never knew existed.

I don’t remember what I was googling a few weeks ago when I came across a site that could calculate how much any given site could earn by advertising.
Ever wanted to know what google.com is making? A killing I should expect.
I couldn’t resist entering the url for this site and see what I’m missing out of.
It turns out that I could earn nearly 2 euro a day. 60 euro a month.
Which is just enough to buy me lunch in my day job.
Hardly worth the effort of adding the codes.

But thinking about a little more I realized that this was hardly a fair judgement.
This site has never been more that a distraction.
I’ve posted articles about drawing, articles about other peoples art and stories.
But never for more then a few weeks in a row.
After a few weeks I get side tracked by some other interest and don’t come back for a few months.
I never put in the work needed to get thousands of readers.

It could be interesting to figure out what I could do with this site.
And to figure out what I want to do with this site.

As you’ll have seen I entered the code for advertising a few days ago.
I also had a nice surprise.
In 2008 I experimented with ads for a while. After earning a few cents I lost interest and took them of my site.
I did leave them on my search results page, but forgot all about them.
Turns out that I earned 22 euro in 2009 and 2010.

change of course

As the regulars among you will have noticed. I have changed my layout and started promoting my art.
Both are things I’ve been dreaming about.
Changing my layout for months. Promoting my art for years.

Layout
To see my new layout there’s no alternative to visiting my site.
But in short I have cleaned it up.
I’ve created a basic layout that showcases my art without all the clutter to encourage people to visit other pages.
If you are interested you’ll find the tag cloud, categories and history of this site on the “archive” page.

Promoting
How to promote my drawings. Or even, if I should promote my drawings is something that I’ve been doubting for years.
If I compare my work to that of people like Van Gogh or Rembrandt how would I even dare to promote my drawings.
But an article by Seth Godin (he advises entrepreneurs) pointed me in the right direction.

A shoe salesman only has to prove that his shoes are better then those of his competitor.
My job is a little more complicated.
I don’t have to prove to you that my art is better then that of other artist.
I have to get you to buy art.

That job turns out to be far more challenging then you would think.

Everybody who reads this site regularly knows that they need art.
That is why they read this site.
The problem is that they don’t know how much art they should buy.

It’s easy when you are very rich.
Someone like Bill Gates buys art as an investment and gets to enjoy it to.
But what about us regular people?
How much art do we need?

Godin advises to just take an arbitrary figure. Something you can maintain.
So I’m assuming that you are a about the same as me. I have my good months and my bad months. But I could spend 1% of my income on art and enjoy it without having the feeling that I’m robbing myself of something else.