Of course as you well know, SOPA and PIPA were taken down with interenet-based protests launched from sites like Reddit just a few months ago. The web that surrounds these takedowns is being spoken to when Ohanian and advocacy group Fight for the Future speak out and promise a Bat-Signal. This Bat-Signal, as they describe it, will be implemented as follows:

“Whatever website you own, this is a way for you to be notified if something comes up and take some basic actions…If we aggregate everyone that’s doing it, the numbers start exploding. [With a one-line HTML code] people who wish to be tapped can see, oh look, the Bat-Signal is up. Time to do something.” – Ohanian for the Internet Defense League

We’re going to go ahead and guess that the technique the Interenet Defense League plans on using will be found a bit suspicious in light of the forces they wish to fight. According to co-director of Fight for the Future Tiffiny Cheng, the code implanted on willing user’s websites will have the ability to blackout the entire site its embedded on.

“We’ll invent something at the time, and it will be some really unified and shocking action. We’re creating the tools and the forms of protest that allow for viral organizing. That’s how the SOPA protests were able to get started and grow to the level they did.” – Cheng for Fight for the Future and the Internet Defense League

Ohanian also spoke up about other actions web users can take to keep the internet safe from harmfull government bills. One idea in particular shouldn’t be so outlandish to the citizens of our fine country – but lo! It certainly is. Attributing this idea to Cheezburger Network chief executive Ben Huh, Ohanian suggests that everyone have their state legislator’s phone numbers on speed-dial:

“They’re like tech support, or customer service. It’s like calling Comcast. They work for us, and we should have their number in our phones and be able to call them when something is upsetting us. Why not? Even something as basic as that brings home a point that SOPA and PIPA proved: That still, in the face of everything else that’s screwed up in Washington, we the American people can fix things.” – Ohanian

So stay tuned, crimefighters, and hit the SlashGear main news feed for all things privacy across the web – same Bat URL, Same Bat Connection!

The bill itself was supposed to be put up for a vote later than it has been presented, here this week being changed radically with several amendments that broaden its power tenfold and voted upon essentially in secret just yesterday. It was Hillary Clinton Senior Adviser for Innovation mister Alec Ross who spoke up this week on behalf of the White House.

“The Obama administration opposes CISPA. The president has called for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. There is absolutely a need for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. [But] part of what has been communicated to congressional committees is that we want legislation to come with necessary protections for individuals.” – Ross

At the moment it’s not clear whether this means that the Obama Administration would veto the bill when it crosses the President’s desk. The bill must be approved by the President, for those of you unfamiliar with the process here, unless when he does both the Senate and the House are able to ratify it without the President’s approval. We’ll see about that inside the next few weeks.

Meanwhile it appears that groups like Reddit are planning new Internet Blackout efforts to demonstrate the seriousness of the bill. Similar protests were initiated for the bills SOPA and PIPA earlier this year with great success.

The bill is supposed to allow the government to use information for “cybersecurity” and “national security” purposes, but three recent additions to the bill give it an even wider (and vaguer) scope. TechDirt details the additions as the “investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children,” and that “Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.”

So if the government suspects you of having committed some kind of cybercrime, they can dig through your information without falling foul of privacy laws. There’s no limit to what the government can use the data for, either, just as long as say that there was some kind of danger. The even crazier part is that Google and Facebook support the bill, believing it help will protect them from cybercrimes.

It’s not all bad news: first the bill would have to pass the Senate, then it would need to be signed into law by President Obama. He’s so far maintained a firm stance on the issue, saying he will veto the bill if it lands on his desk. The fact that it managed to pass the House without too many issues is a cause for concern though, and the EFF suggests you get in touch with your local representative in Congress to drum up awareness of how damaging this bill could potentially be.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg himself spoke out against SOPA and PIPA, this time the bill known as CISPA has been defended by Facebook’s Joel Kaplan, Vice President-U.S. Public Policy. His explanation of the bill notes the following important facts – bolded in the text shared with Facebook in a statement today:

Importantly, HR 3523 would impose no new obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to safeguard our users’ private information, just as we do today.

…

The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity. Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place…

Those of you still unsure of what the CISPA bill includes, check out the PDF of the actual bill as well as our write-up on the situation from earlier today. Don’t let this one out of your sights, folks!

This bill, like PIPA and SOPA before it, has been pulling in comments from around the web – especially in high-powered networks such as Reddit. Both SOPA and PIPA were effectively crushed by the combined efforts of social networking site sharing and web-based celebrity endorsements of their destruction – and the same appears to be happening this month with CISPA. This bill also recalls points in question with the international bill ACTA.

The sponsors of this bill are attempting currently to note that the bill has nothing to do with domain seizures, yet allows Homeland Security entities to do just that with a variety of new broad access tools. CISPA allows giant companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google to intercept emails you send and receive and send them to the US Government without your consent, and repeatedly mentions the term “cybersecurity” without defining it other than what lies here – Cybersecurity being anything related to protecting networks from:

‘(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or ‘(B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.

(Note pulled via CNET)

With this definition, the US Government could demand essentially any website on the web send them any information they request “for cybersecurity purposes”, no matter what. This bill currently has the support of over 100 representatives in the US House and will be going to the House for voting on the 23rd of April.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a tool up right now that you can use to find and contact your representative to tell them that this bill will not stand. That is, unless you agree with the measures listed above. Let us know what you think!

ISPs are planning to implement a Copyright Alert System, what they believe to be a “gradual elevation” approach to piracy. If a user is caught downloading pirated material five or six times, the ISPs system would alert them to this, and potentially throttle internet speeds, or cut off the user’s access altogether until they contact the service provider.

While the plan was first unveiled back in July 2011, some ISPs may be very close to activating their implementation of the plan. Speaking at a publishers conference this week in New York, Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said:

Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system. Every ISP has to do it differently, depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion, and others are a little further from completion.

While the backlash over SOPA has died down, at least for now, it’s a reminder that ISPs and anti-piracy lobbys continue to work behind the scenes. Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that it’s unclear what the range of penalties is if a user continues to download infringing material. Mitch Stoltz, an attorney with the EFF, believes that the plan “puts the ISPs in the position of being a judge” without there being any kind of court.

Facebook, which has one of the strongest and most organized lobbying platform among players in the online social market, now only has one major firm in its back pocket, Elmendorf Ryan. The site spent $1.35 million on lobbying in 2011, compared to just $351,000 in 2010. Much of that went to the organizations that are no longer supporting it. What this means is those lobbying groups most likely received pressure to axe Facebook from content provider clients, who are increasingly on the opposite side of the aisle from companies like Facebook.

It would be like a lobbying group that supported both YouTube and Viacom. Facebook, however, hasn’t really been looked at as a beacon of Internet piracy. Nevertheless, there is a digital divide happening right now, and even though the American public is on the side of companies like Facebook and Google, the money and power in Washington is on the other side. Politico quoted lobbyists and other sources as saying Facebook will have no trouble locking in other lobbying contracts with new firms, but this is a clear sign that the efforts put into place by the SOPA and PIPA bills are still carrying on.

[via Politico]

Members of the British music industry are currently pushing the government to require that The Pirate Bay be blocked by UK internet providers entirely, but appear to be completely oblivious to the storm which erupted just weeks ago after the SOPA and PIPA bills were judged by the social web. At a time in which sharing and the legal and illegal cloud storage and distribution of media are being hotly contested, this move is certainly going to feel the heat of the web as a whole once it’s understood that the implications of blocking one site entirely will have repercussions on the rest.

The idea that a single site can be blocked by a country is a concept that, in this editor’s opinion, should have been tossed out at the very origin of the web. Instead, Justice Arnold of the British High Court wrote the following:

“In my judgment, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] do authorise [BSP] its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting. I conclude that both users and the operators of [The Pirate Bay] infringe the copyrights of the claimants … in the UK. [The Pirate Bay] take no steps to prevent infringement, [and instead] actively encourage it and treat any attempts to prevent it (judicial or otherwise) with contempt.” – Arnold

The words read like an outraged housewife simply mortified that her son would disobey a direct order not to eat a candy bar before supper. Meanwhile the British Photographic Industry have spoken up an agreed with the judgement by the BCH saying it’s a victory for musicians and all creative industries in general. Geoff Taylor, chief executive of BPI, wrote the following in a statement:

“The high court today ruled that The Pirate Bay is illegal. The site defrauds musicians and causes huge damage to the music industry and wider creative industries. The ruling helps clarify the law on website blocking and we will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm.” – Taylor

There’s a difference between protecting the rights of artists and taking an entire country and burying its head in the sand so it can’t see the illegally downloadable content produced by the artists altogether. Please phone the government representative of your choice today, UK, and make sure that no website is blocked throughout your country. This is unjust and undeniably unfair to the free and open web.

[via Digital Trends]

Although SOPA and PIPA appear to be shelved for the time being, the letter highlights concerns that Congress will continue to push similar measures. It asks Congress to take a new approach to the issues, saying that the concerns cannot be addressed by simply revising the bills or negotiated behind closed doors with a small set of stakeholders.

The letter further accuses Congress of taking a narrow, single-industry perspective on the intellectual property issues, siding with a small group of rights holders, such as the RIAA and MPAA, that believe the current laws are too weak. It insists that Congress must also consider how the current laws have been too prohibitive, undermining free speech and innovation.

This agreement is one that’s being signed by leaders around the world as we speak, having been in the works for over a year now without any mass media coverage and largely unread by those who sign it. The ACTA is an agreement that will bring into play another worldwide organization which will have laws that supersede any and all individual countries laws and will ultimately make it so internet providers will find it more cost-effective just to give over your personal information to the organization than to keep your activities private. The Internet will be censored, the internet will no longer be a free and open form of communication, and nothing will be the same.

You’ll be glad you read these select parts of the apology written up by the ambassador after she signed the agreement in question:

On Thursday, 26th January, 2012, I signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on behalf of the Republic of Slovenia, following the directive and authorisation of the Slovenian government. A somewhat longer clarification of the signature can be found on the Media section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, which explains the role of the Ministry and my role as the Slovenian Ambassador to Japan. This explanation states that I signed the agreement because I was instructed to do so by the government, and because it is a part of my job. …

I signed ACTA out of civic carelessness, because I did not pay enough attention. Quite simply, I did not clearly connect the agreement I had been instructed to sign with the agreement that, according to my own civic conviction, limits and withholds the freedom of engagement on the largest and most significant network in human history, and thus limits particularly the future of our children. I allowed myself a period of civic complacency, for a short time I unplugged myself from media reports from Slovenia, I took a break from Avaaz and its inflation of petitions, quite simply I allowed myself a rest. In my defence, I want to add that I very much needed this rest and that I am still having trouble gaining enough energy for the upcoming dragon year. At the same time, I am tackling a workload that increased, not lessened, with the advent of the current year. All in line with a motto that has become familiar to us all, likely not only diplomats: less for more. Less money and fewer people for more work. And then you overlook the significance of what you are signing. And you wake up the following morning with the weight of the unbearable lightness of some signature.

On Saturday, 4th February, a protest is planned in Ljubljana for those who object to the ratification of ACTA. The true concern and determination of those Slovenian citizens who feel that the agreement must be stopped will be reflected in the number of people who attend this protest. I would like to ask for somebody to please attend in my name. One of my concerned correspondents asked me what my brother, the late Dr. Janez Drnovšek , would have thought of my signature. The struggle to protect civic freedoms is most certainly in the spirit of his heritage, much more so than the removal or non-removal of some statue. Let my example be a cautionary tale of how swiftly we can make mistakes if we allow ourselves to slip. And if nothing else, we then sleep very badly.

Helena Drnovšek Zorko

You can read the entirety of the letter written by Zorko on Metinalista and find yourself a reason why not to rally with protesters of the ACTA to bring this agreement down before it reaches final ratification. There’s still time to stop it – we must!

[via TechDirt]

The quote the landed Dodd in so much hot water was this:

“This industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake,” Dodd told Fox News on Jan. 19. “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

The petition at Whitehouse.gov called for an investigation into Dodd claiming that he publicly admitted bribing politicians to pass legislation favorable to the MPAA. So far, 31,000 people have signed the bribery investigation petition since it was posted on January 21. The White House has offered no comment on the petition thus far because it calls for a legal investigation. The White House said:

“Consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action.”

[via IDG]

It was a rather stark and perhaps ironic discussion place for the bill. After all, Obama is the most technologically-active president the United States has ever seen. Tonight’s event, at the behest of the president, was broadcast on YouTube, a site that by its own admission would be forced to shut down the day that SOPA was put into effect, should that day ever come. As such, even though he is a master of political statements, it was pretty obvious what Obama’s true sentiments were about the proposed law.

“I think that it’s going to be possible for us” to go a different route for battling online piracy. It doesn’t have to be SOPA, Obama said. “What I’ve suggested is that both sides–the content side and the server side–come together and work with us to create a system where there are strong protections in place.” In the last few weeks, there have only been lawmakers who were in support of the bill who now oppose it. There have been no Congressmen who had the reverse change of heart.

[via Cnet]

ACTA was signed by the US and Canada last year, with Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Greece all joining Poland in agreeing to the act this year. However, despite the governmental support, internet users and privacy activists have been outspoken in their opposition.

The Act, they say, removes safeguards that currently protect an ISP from the activity of its subscribers, something that is expected to increase the likelihood of internet providers reducing user privacy so as to avoid incriminating themselves. The Free Software Foundation has alleged that ACTA would also prevent sites from distributing apps that could be used to acquire content illegally, such as BitTorrent and other P2P software.

Local internet activist factions claiming to be part of Anonymous subsequently attacked various Polish government sites, resulting in sporadic downtime, while sites of groups supporting ACTA were also targeted. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski argued that the internet was at risk of becoming a place of “legal anarchy” and that “theft on a massive scale of intellectual property is not a good thing.”

[via TechDirt]

“This is not an attempt to extract information from the website but is instead an attempt to stop access to a service” the official Irish statement said. “There appears to be no damage done to the website.”

The new Irish legislation, “S.I. No. of 2011 European Communities (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2011″, has already been dubbed “SOPA Ireland” and gathered over 32,000 signatures to an online petition protesting the act. “This legislation subverts the democratic process,” the protestors claim, “favors the special interests of corporations over the rights of individual citizens, will destroy the largest growth sector in the Irish economy, and will subject the citizens of Ireland to unwarranted and unintended censorship.”

Under the new legislation, ISPs could be forced to block access to sites that offer content believed to be illegally shared. Its origins are in a High Court ruling from 2010, in which music publisher EMI won a claim that content it owned the rights to was being distributed but, because of the limitations of the Copyright Act as it stood, no actual action could be taken.

The new system involves directing people to specially constructed webpages that rely on JavaScript to redirect visitors to any site to be targeted, the page repeatedly attempting to access that target until the window is closed. A variation on the theme offers more control to the user, allowing them to set their own target by URL or IP address.

Because the attack can be triggered inadvertently, without the user realizing, it’s suggested that there is plausible deniability should future investigations cite their particular IP address. This is not the case with LOIC, which members of Anonymous have taken to running through the secure TOR network so as to mask their own IP address and escape identification.

“If you are an unwitting participant then technically you’re not liable under the law” computer crime specialist Jennifer Granick suggests, ”because all criminal statutes, with some narrow exceptions, require some criminal state of mind.”

Anonymous began distributing links to such sites via its Twitter feed, and the tool is believed to have assisted in last week’s takedown of the Department of Justice site, among others. Meanwhile, PC Mag reports, Universal Music and Vivendi were both forced offline this weekend, while a DNS poisoning attack redirected all visitors to CBS.com.

If you attempt to access Uploaded.to from a US IP address, however, you’re greeted with the message that “Our service is currently unavailable in your country. Sorry about that.” Neither site has made any public announcement of the change in services, leading to speculation that the decision to curtail file sharing was a sudden reaction to the shock arrest of MegaUpload CEO Kim Dotcom and other employees of the site.

MegaUpload’s demise last week was promptly followed by an all-out attack by Anonymous, with the Department of Justice, RIAA, MPAA and other sites all taken down in a combined retaliatory DDoS. It’s unclear what reaction there might be to the voluntary takedown of these two new sites, though one complaint about how MegaUpload was handled – that innocent users storing non-copyright files were unable to access their cloud-based content – would seemingly also apply to Uploaded.to as well.

FileSonic, meanwhile, had been operating an affiliates program, which allowed users to get paid the more times that their files were downloaded. That too has been shut down, presumably to avoid complaints that it encouraged tempting copyrighted content to be illegally shared and promoted.

[via DigitalTrends]

For CES 2012 collections, we’ve got the almighty Ultrabook Round-up at the head of things, then a Smart TV Round-up to keep your displays wishing they had some more intuitive bits of software behind them. The tag team of Tablet Round-up and Smartphone Round-up brings the mobile to the party, and our gigantic Best of CES 2012 will let you in on the top excellence. I also invite you to come with me on a journey through the week with your humble narrator and his gear (my backpack included) in a column called My CES 2012.

Our week this week then started with an announcement of sorts from Microsoft that Skype on Windows Phone would finally be hitting the public – soon – and it may be their wild card, so says Chris Davies. Meanwhile there’s a brand new Nissan self-healing iPhone case on the streets, and Android lovers had a field day with Steve Wozniak’s comments on what he thought was better than iOS in the Google mobile operating system.

In hacking news there was one whole heck of a lot to be had, starting with the Zappos break-in, moving on to the 6pm break-in, and our subsequent PSA SlashGear 101: Basic Password Security. We saw $6.7 million USD stolen in a cyber bank robbery. We then started relatively early in taking on SOPA and PIPA with an explanatory post by the name of SlashGear 101: SOPA and PIPA explained in plain English. We also took a very clear stand in SOPA and PIPA are the Wrong Way to Tackle Piracy and the video by Clay Shirky for TED tells it like it is as well. As it turns out, the Internet won and SOPA and PIPA were delayed indefinitely.

The next bill by the main SOPA sponsor is 1981, and is much scarier.

The next hammer to fall was Megaupload being knocked out amid piracy indictments. In response to this, Anonymous DDoS attacked the Department of Justice, the RIAA, the MPAA, and Universal Music. The Megaupload team spoke out, followed by Anonymous becoming more vocal on #OpMegaUpload.

Apple was the first tech company to join the Fair Labor Association, the “Icons” Steve Jobs action figure was completely axed, and it’s looking like Scott Forstall is aiming for the CEO spot soon. There’s been a bit of a tip that the iPad 3 will come February while the iPad 2 remains on sale. There’s another rumor out there that says the iPad 2S is up next while the iPad 3 gets pushed back.

Another tablet out there this month that will be no competition for the iPad at all whatsoever was the Hongpaiyihao Chinese “government official” slate which costs more than any other tablet on the market and has next to nothing appealing in or on it. A more real competitor is continuing to take shape in the Windows 8 Tablet space, Microsoft releasing hardware requirements for manufacturers to start the year off right. The Acer Ultrabook lineup is also set to take off.

The education world was hit with a few announcements from Apple with iBooks 2 and textbooks, the price point of $14.99 for textbooks, and iBooks Author – free for download. We got hands-on with iBooks Author, iTunes U, and iBooks 2. You can get the whole Apple education roundup at once. Also read up on what Philip Berne has to say in The Problem with Tech and Teaching.

Microsoft also came correct with an early preview of System Center 2012 which will be hitting your private cloud sooner than later! Michael Crider reviewed the new HP Folio 13. Alienware revealed the fabulous Alienware X51 crossover device. The folks at Scientology are creating a new Super Power Building with their followers’ cash, the fifth oldest tree in the world The Senator spontaneously combusted, and the Costa Concordia cruise ship fell on its side and went halfway under off the Tuscan coast. You can see it from outer space or from under the sea.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is being pushed to tablets. BlackBerry got told by Chris Davies in a column called RIM should think Type not Touch for the new PlayBook. Samsung is walking a narrow road with their update to Ice Cream Sandwich with their Galaxy devices, keeping with a Value Pack instead of a full upgrade for older models. Samsung is also working on a bada / Tizen merge that’s not yet final. Microsoft and ZTE gave each other a high five and us a preview hands-on with the ZTE Tania running Windows Phone. Meanwhile there was a strange silence from Microsoft on Windows Phone in their quarterly financial results announcement.

There was a bit of a change as AT&T amped up their prices and T-Mobile followed suit. The social network Facebook updated its Timeline to spread to everyone. Kodak went bankrupt. Resident Evil 6 was announced. Don Reisinger columned about the next PlayStation and how HBO Go is the next Netflix.

Music keeps getting more and more serious in the mobile realm, especially with iPad, starting with the Auria 48-track recording system app. There’s a set of three Behringer iPad mixers out there now, and the Akai MPC Fly turns your iPad into a portable beats center. The Numak IDJ PRO DJ Controller sits your iPad at the center of all the fun. Gotta catch em all!

What it does is to amend several rules that have to do with Child Pornography and preventing it, the bill itself called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.” What it also does is to change the U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records to include a requirement that your internet service provider do the following:

A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

While it was legal for the government to issue a subpoena for the viewing of the information they speak about here before, it was not part of the law that internet service providers capture or retain that information at any point. In effect, while before the authorities would need to first find a reason for you to need to be watched to get the ISP to start collecting information from you, that information will already exist on file, effectively meaning you’re being watched and recorded even if you’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t worry though, there’s an additional set of lines that should placate you because it’s so very kind of them to think of:

(1) to encourage electronic communication service providers to give prompt notice to their customers in the event of a breach of the data retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18 of the United States Code, in order that those effected can take the necessary steps to protect themselves from potential misuse of private information; and

(2) that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records.

So don’t worry, your information will be “stored securely” so noone else can access it! But if they do access it, your ISP will give you “prompt notice” so you can change all your credit card numbers, hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband. This bill has currently cleared its committee, this meaning that the next step is a full vote. This bill needs to be stopped, and if I might go one better, Lamar Smith needs to be stopped, for the good of the internet and YOUR privacy.

[via GCN]

It’s not that these kinds of bills won’t ever crop up again, because they certainly will, but it is nice to see that these Senators and representatives can be influenced by the public rather than by those dropping cash on their re-election campaigns. Of course it’s not as simple as all that, but there it is – these bills are essentially toast! The next thing that’ll happen is they’ll be re-written and tried for passage with much less media attention – we can’t let that happen. That said, Lamar Smith had the following to say on the subject today:

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products. The Committee will continue work with both copyright owners and Internet companies to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property. We welcome input from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem.” – Smith

Certainly that would be a problem if that were the case, mister Smith, but you and I know that this is not why the bill has failed you. Former Senator Chris Dodd, in the wake of this decision and certainly in the wake of yesterday’s events with Anonymous, had a bit to say on the subject as well:

“With today’s announcement, we hope the dynamics of the conversation can change and become a sincere discussion about how best to protect the millions of American jobs affected by the theft of American intellectual property. It is incumbent that they now sincerely work with all of us to achieve a meaningful solution to this critically important goal.” – Dodd

This isn’t the last we’ve heard of this subject, I assure you.

[via Ars Technica]

Instead, Senator Reid suggests that Chairman Leahy return to the drawing board and redraft the proposed act, and that “there is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved.” A balance is needed, it’s claimed, between protecting American IP and “maintaining openness and innovation on the internet”, something that echoes comments by the Obama Administration’s team of tech and IP geeks.

When, exactly, a revised act could be resubmitted to the Senate is unclear. However, with the FBI moving on Megaupload in the past day, and Anonymous retaliating with a huge DDoS against the Department of Justice and various media organizations, it’s clear this issue isn’t going away anytime soon.

Everything you need to know on SOPA and PIPA in our SlashGear 101 Guide.

Full Statement:

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.

I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks” Senator Harry Reid

You can check for yourself with several sites that check the network status of sites, RIAA.ORG is down for the count, Justice.org is no longer, http://universalmusic.com is nowhere to be seen, and the Motion Picture Association of America will be showing no films at the moment. Each of these groups had a part in knocking out Megaupload and certainly had a say in not only SOPA but PIPA as well. For those of you that don’t know, both bills are being heavily reconsidered now due to the massive dissent seen yesterday during the blackouts.

What this appears very much to be is the solidification of the internetization of justice on a grand scale. As AnonDaily reports, Anonymous has taken down 10 sites in 20 minutes and this is therefor the “Largest On Scale Attack Ever” by the group. We’ll see where this leads us in regards to fair sharing and trading of ideas on the internet from here on out, a place where hackers take command of the internet with their ability to knock out any website, no matter who runs it, in no time flat.

By many counts, the blackout was a huge success. Google gathered 4.5m signatures on its anti-SOPA/PIPA petition, the LA Times reports, after the search engine added a “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the web!” message to its normally minimalist homepage. Meanwhile, More than 162m people saw Wikipedia’s English-language blackout page, the site says, and 8m went on to search for their elected representatives’ contact info in its address tool.

As for lawmakers, representatives in both the House and the Senate made changes to their stance on the two acts. OpenCongress (itself up and down this morning, but Google’s cache works) reports eighteen in the Senate now oppose the act, of which seven were previously co-sponsors.

Reasons varied somewhat, but many spoke of changing their determination for SOPA and PIPA after hearing the scale of the antipathy toward them. “I’m pulling my support because your concerns deserve consideration before Congress moves forward” New Hampshire Republican Kelly Hyotte tweeted, while Missouri Republican Roy Blunt took to Facebook to describe PIPA as “legislation that is deeply flawed and still needs much work” which “is why I’m withdrawing my co-sponsorship for the Protect IP Act.”

Nonetheless, a vote on PIPA is expected to be held on January 24, while SOPA will be pushed forward in February, according to sponsor Lamar Smith. The risk is high that minor tweaks will be made that appear to remove particularly contentious points, but in fact merely whitewash the issues. “We expect changes that appear to tone down the damaging effects of the laws,” Wikipedia warns, “without addressing their fundamental flaws.”

As we wrote yesterday, there’s more information on on SOPA/PIPA in our plain English guide to the proposed acts, while details as to how you can contact your US Representative – or simply make your voice heard if you’re outside the US – at sopastrike.com/strike. More information can be found at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

What Shirky says here is that this isn’t the first time the big names in the media industry have tried to stop us, the public, from sharing and creating our own media. What they’d like, and that these bills and bills of the past have tried to do, as he’ll explain, is bring us back to the ideal age for them, when televisions and radios were what we sat in front of and consumed, and that’s it. Everything from video tapes to xerox copy machines to the newest weapons of sharing, downloads and streaming video, these are things that the groups producing and otherwise selling the media you consume would have stomped out and destroyed.

If SOPA and PIPA pass, you will be guilty until proven innocent. Because groups like YouTube cannot by any realistic means afford to police each and every person who submits videos to their site, they’d have to shut down uploads by you, and would only be able to show videos they upload themselves that have been pre-approved by the owners of said media. Tumblr, WordPress, essentially every message board in the world, and more, will be under the gun should SOPA and PIPA pass, simply because they do not have the legal means to stop the wave of taketown notices that would pummel them.

Watch that video, see what you think. Also check our timeline below for the rest of the SOPA and PIPA related news and columns.

His note itself has over 75 thousand likes on it, having gotten these in right around 10 minutes, the support from his followers (and the rest of the internet) quite clear at this point. Zuckerberg notes that Facebook is wholly against both SOPA and PIPA and he also links to Facebook’s position page making their views, again, very clear.

You can check out our view on SOPA and PIPA in the post we laid out this morning, and find out all you need to know about the bills in our timeline below. These bills are dangerous and WILL have adverse affects on the way you are able to access information if they’re allowed to pass. Don’t let it happen!

GoogleBot’s crawl activity has been slowed, this coming in addition to Google’s big SEO advice column from yesterday for people who’d back then been preparing for today. As Google’s Pierre Far says today, they don’t want you to miss out on all that tasty traffic just because you’re doing something positive for the web. Far said thusly on his G+ account:

“Hello webmasters! We realize many webmasters are concerned about the medium-term effects of today’s blackout. As a precaution, the crawl team at Google has configured Googlebot to crawl at a much lower rate for today only so that the Google results of websites participating in the blackout are less likely to be affected.” – Far

So there you go! Take part and take heed! Also check out our timeline of SOPA-related posts to get the full taste of what the SOPA and PIPA bills are and what they mean. Also check out our most recent entry on how R3 Media feels about the bills – thats SlashGear and Android Community’s overarching name, if you did not know.

[via Google+]

Content theft is not something we advocate at SlashGear. Like many news sites online, there are numerous “scraper sites” grabbing the content we produce and republishing it without permission; we understand how frustrating that can be. Yet, there are already tools to tackle content theft – like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) – and which do so with the same mindfulness of due process that other laws in the US and abroad have been built upon.

Perhaps most frustrating is that neither the Stop Online Piracy Act nor the Protect IP Act would actually effectively address piracy in any way more effective than current tools. As Google and others have pointed out, those sharing or searching for illegal content could easily circumnavigate the limitations SOPA and PIPA would allow. Everybody else would be left to face the unnecessarily strict threat of censorship, with companies forced into monitoring users to ensure they didn’t upload anything remotely controversial.

Today’s tools may not be perfect, but blanket laws that threaten the free speech currently permitted on the internet are even more dangerous. The powers SOPA and PIPA would grant would not only mean sources of pirated content could be taken down without due process, but that any site daring to voice opinions not shared by big content companies, ISPs or the US government could also find itself taken offline before it had even had a chance to argue its case.

You can find out more about SOPA/PIPA in our plain English guide to the proposed acts, and details on how to contact your US Representative – or, if you are outside the US, how to make your voice heard too – at sopastrike.com/strike. There’s also more information at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Google’s “End Piracy, Not Liberty” campaign takes a similar approach to Wikipedia, explaining how SOPA/PIPA could be used to censor the internet in a way that doesn’t actually challenge piracy. It’s a stance that has already earned the search company vocal criticism, with News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch blasting Google as the “piracy leader” of the internet.

Meanwhile, reddit’s twelve hour blackout begins in around four hours time, at time of publishing,  while Firefox developer Mozilla has also announced that it will be joining in with a blackout of its own. Other participating sites can be found here.

In desperate need of a quick Wikipedia look-up? The online encyclopedia’s English-language mobile site is still functional, will likely load automatically on your phone (and some tablets), and is accessible in regular browsers by visiting m.wikipedia.com.

If you’re more interested in finding out what, exactly, SOPA and PIPA are, and why you should be concerned by them, head over to our SlashGear 101 explanation.

The temporary hold up on SOPA is partially due to the upcoming Republican and Democratic retreats, which will take place over the next two weeks. Markup on the bill will resume in February to move it out of committee and into the House and Senate. The most controversial part of the bill, DNS blocking of rogue sites, will be removed.

The announcement comes just hours ahead of a major blackout digital protest that will include Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, BoingBoing, and Google, among others. Wikipedia announced yesterday that its English site will shut down for 24 hours, displaying only a message urging against SOPA, while Reddit will shut down for 12 hours and Google will add a link to its homepage that expresses its opposition to SOPA.

For more background on SOPA and its sister bill PIPA, make sure to check out our SlashGear 101 post on the matter.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and its sibling bill is PIPA, or the Protect IP Act. Both bills are written in a way that makes them appear to attempt the killing of online piracy – the hosting of media like videos, music, software, and the like, and offering it for download when the hosts do not have the right to do so. What they actually would do, instead, is to put up a screen door to block a wave, this stopping all of the law-abiding fish when its the water they’re trying to get. SOPA and PIPA give rights to businesses and the government itself to stop and sue companies out of existence, even if they’re not actually doing anything illegal.

NOTE: Read the entirety of SOPA here and the entirety of PIPA here.

SOPA and PIPA work with non-US sites by attacking the sites inside the USA that work with them to bring their content to US citizens. Just to be clear, the US government already has the right to seize domains inside the USA (.com, .net. and .org) they believe are used for piracy, and have been doing so since 2010 through the “Operation In Our Sites” act with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) – having seized hundreds of domains thus far. The Pentagon has “Cyberspace” as an Operational Domain as well, if you want to know. What SOPA and PIPA do instead is to force US-based internet service providers, search engines, online payment groups (like Paypal), and ad services to stop working with, indexing, and paying groups outside the USA if they host illegal content.

Copyright owners will be able to write up a certain kind of letter under SOPA and PIPA to a media host such as YouTube or any manner of data host (like the ones that host SlashGear) demanding that if the group (like us) take down any little bit of content we have, without proof that it’s theirs. If we do no respond within five days, our host would have to either take us down entirely, or face themselves being sued into a corner as well. Can you see how this might be harmful to more people than just those who are “real” pirates of illegal content?

SOPA has a section (section 104, if you’re counting) which allows for a big bad conflict of interests that favors giant companies like Comcast. As mister Nilay Patel notes, legal immunity to ISPs like Comcast to block websites at will. Comcast owns NBC, and if they found a group from somewhere outside the USA that competes with them, they could claim, technically, that if they had “reasonable belief” that they were “dedicated to the theft of US property,” they could stop them from being shown to everyone under their Comcast umbrella.

That’s not an open and free Internet, and it will not stop piracy.

And this is just the beginning. The people writing up this bill are not alone, and they’re not going to stop just the same as the people pirating media are not going to stop, ever. You’re not going to get someone to stop looking at your painting if its out in public, you’re not going to stop someone from smelling the lovely smells your bakery gives off – the only thing you can do, media creators, is evolve.

These lawmakers are not protecting the interests of movie makers, they’re not helping out those who make music for a living. They’re attempting to control the free and open internet as it stands today so they can profit from a closed market. Plain and simple.

Get educated, do everything you can to stop this kind of outright evil.

[poll 25]

“As for me, what I am hoping is that people outside the US who have friends or family who are voters in the US, will ask them to make a call to their senator or representative,” Wales explained, “and I hope we send a broad global message that the internet as a whole will not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement.”

The alternative, the Wikipedia founder says, was the possibility of only taking down the site for US visitors. That resulted in a close vote on how broad the protest should be: in the end, 591 of the Wikipedia community polled said they were in favor of the global blackout, against 479 calling for it to be US-only. “While there was a solid majority, it wasn’t the overwhelming majority that we had for the whole concept” Wales admits. “It seems to have been somewhat of a tough choice for many people.”

SOPA has, most recently, been apparently shelved after the Obama Administration voiced concerns that the proposed act might be too dangerous in terms of challenging the underlying openness of the internet. It’s a stance that earned the US President a tongue-lashing from News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, who described Obama as having “thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters” while Google is apparently the “piracy leader.”

If you’re panic-stricken at the thought of being without Wikipedia for 24hrs, there’s still hope. You can download an offline version of the database from here, assuming you have sufficient drive space and bandwidth.

“This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know,” tweeted Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales this morning calling the move a decision made by the Wikipedia community. The announcement, however, follows Congress’ decision earlier today to shelve the SOPA vote until there is consensus on the bill.

Nonetheless, companies are going forward with the blackout and note that the bill could still be resurrected and that PIPA is still being actively considered. “We have no indication that SOPA is fully off the table,” said Wales in another tweet this morning. “PIPA is still alive and kicking. We need to send Washington a BIG message.”

[via VentureBeat]

Issa continued by noting that “While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act, I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House.” This is, again, a decisive victory for not only those opponents of the bill in Washington, but the masses of internet groups that came out to oppose the bill and its flawed bits allowing companies to shut down webpages at the crack of a whip. You can view the full continuum of events surrounding this situation in our timeline below.

Meanwhile do not think to yourself that this is the end of such legislature. The powers that be will continue to try to move through congress, the house, and the president to bring about a bill that’ll allow big business to censor the internet. It sounds too absurd to be true, but the possibility is there – know it, and fight against it.

[Image via Haibane]

“Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery” Murdoch fumed, before illustrating his complaint with Google by searching for movie Mission Impossible. “Wow, several sites offering free links” he concluded, “I rest my case.”

Murdoch’s SOPA-supporting tirade was derailed somewhat by fellow tweeters commenting on his stance, and complaining about theater prices. “Agree about cinema prices which out [sic] of our control” Murdoch conceded, “but even more offensive are prices for popcorn and sodas.”

Google didn’t comment on the cost of cinema snacks, but did counter Murdoch’s argument about its attitude toward illegal content. “This is just nonsense” a spokesperson for the search giant said. “Last year we took down 5 million infringing web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads … Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking US companies to censor the Internet.”

[via Telegraph]

“”Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small” Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff wrote in a statement. ”We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet”"

The response has been tentatively welcomed by privacy advocates, though it’s clear that this isn’t the outright dismissal of either SOPA or PIPA that many have hoped for.

“We appreciate the Administration’s recognition that our ability to innovate, invest, and grow the economy is dependent upon keeping the Internet open and free. We are also pleased that Majority Leader Cantor has assured House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will not go to the House floor without consensus, which is clearly not the case at this time” Markham Erickson, Executive Director, NetCoalition

High-profile sites have already begun to take advocacy against the acts-in-progress into their own hands. Crowd-sourced site reddit has announced that it will hold an anti-SOPA blackout on January 18, taking the site offline for twelve hours and directing visitors to contact their local US Representatives in order to voice their concerns about the acts. Meanwhile, Wikipedia is apparently considering a similar blackout, and hack-collective Anonymous has said it too will be going dark on January 18 in combined protest. CES-organizers CEA and NVIDIA have also recently thrown their support behind SOPA/PIPA.

The Obama Administration has said it will contact the organizer of a high-profile anti-SOPA petition, along with a random sample of those who signed it, to a conference call to discuss the issue further. Beyond that, it promises to ”host an online event to get more input and answer your questions.”

At the same time, the authors of the SOPA and PIPA acts have each said they will remove sections of the proposed acts that would force ISPs to block foreign sites offering content suspected of infringing US copyright. Both Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, and Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, have said they will strip the ISP section in SOPA and PIPA respectively, MacWorld reports, though the potential for a DOJ court order to force search engines, advertisers and online payment companies to strip links for foreign sites and stop doing business with them remains.

The problem started when the ESA, the Entertainment Software Association, came out in support of SOPA, they including a list of members which include NVIDIA amongst other top-tier technology groups. What NVIDIA says today is that those in the ESA that posted their support of the SOPA bill did not consult NVIDIA before they formulated their position. In essence, the club they belong to said they represented NIVIDA when they actually didn’t. Sherbin’s text read thusly:

“NVIDIA wasn’t consulted by ESA in formulating their position on SOPA. Our position is this: we oppose piracy, as it hurts our game-developer partners. However, we do not support SOPA. We don’t believe it is the right solution to the problem. We remain committed to working to address this problem in a constructive and fair manner.” – Sherbin

Now we’ve just got to get everyone else who attended CES 2012 to agree with the position of those in charge of CES. Think we can do it?

[via NVIDIA]

“I’d like to talk to our government affairs advisor to see if they agree on this as useful timing, but assuming that’s a greenlight, I think that matching what Reddit does (but in our own way of course) per the emerging consensus on how to do it, is a good idea. But that means we need to move forward quickly on a concrete proposal and vote – we don’t have the luxury of time that we usually have, in terms of negotiating with each other for weeks about what’s exactly the best possible thing to do. As I understand it, the Foundation is talking to people about how we can geolocate and guide people to their Congressperson, etc. Geoff will know about that. Our task is to decide to do it with a thumbs up / thumbs down vote” Jimmy Wales, founder, Wikipedia

Wikipedia had mulled a blackout earlier this month, as part of NetCoalition discussions with Amazon, PayPal, Google and others about whether a period of synchronized downtime could rally opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act. A similar stunt by tumblr last year prompted near 90,000 calls to US Representatives.

Blogging platform WordPress has also joined the anti-SOPA drive, though it’s unclear if it’s also advocating a blackout. “Blogging is a form of activism” community manager Jane Wells said in a post on the company’s own blog. “You can be an agent of change.”

“The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves” Jane Wells, WordPress

More information on how you can help raise awareness – both public and among senators – around SOPA opposition here.

[via The Inquirer]

“Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action … We’re not taking this action lightly. We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t believe this legislation and the forces behind it were a serious threat to reddit and the Internet as we know it. Blacking out reddit is a hard choice, but we feel focusing on a day of action is the best way we can amplify the voice of the community.” Reddit

It’s not the first blackout protest that has been staged to show users just what they might find happening to their favorite sites should SOPA pass. Microblogging site tumblr prompted almost 90,000 calls to US Representatives in November, after taking the site offline bar offering a way for concerned users to get in touch with their local elected official.

Subsequently, Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal and others have openly mulled the possibility of a synchronized blackout, as the opponents to SOPA grow more concerned that the act could succeed. Earlier today, CES 2012 organizer CEA announced it too opposes SOPA, directing the “nerd army” over to DeclareInnovation.com to find out how they can protest.

It should come as no surprise that CES as an organization has spoken out against SOPA, it being a force that’s very much the opposite of what CES is all about. There’s been a massive bit of dissent on the web when it comes to fighting off SOPA, and CES coming out against it as well should be another big blow to those attempting to get it passed. Stick with us here on SlashGear for the rest of the keynote, happening now and accessible to you through [CES Live]

The first response GoDaddy felt came the week before Christmas when they saw 70,00 domain names moved away from its services. Since most users turned to services such as NameCheap, GoDaddy competitors were feeling the benefits of GoDaddy’s mistakes. This mass exodus wasn’t the only backlash GoDaddy felt. Although GoDaddy retracted its support, MLG recently dropped all domains from GoDaddy.

NameCheap has been doing quite well since the wave of GoDaddy criticism hit. Not only did they gain users after the initial mass exodus, they also acquired MLG as a customer. MLG announced the transition from GoDaddy to NameCheap in an official statement quoted below.

MLG would like to officially announce that we have removed our entire network, which encompasses over 100 domains, from GoDaddy.com in response to their support of SOPA. Moving forward, we will be using Namecheap for all of our hosting needs.

MLG is firmly against both the specifics of SOPA and the philosophy behind the bill. We urge all of you to read up on the issue and draw your own conclusions.

Originally, threats against the PSN were made by Anonymous members as part of #OpSony, with the warning that Sony’s “support of the act is a signed death warrant” and that “yet again, we have decided to destroy your network.” That was later amended to single out Sony executives, PlayStationLifestyle reports, rather than the PSN itself, with Anonymous declaring open season on the credit card details and other personal information.

Sony is yet to comment on the Anonymous issue, but it’s worth noting that, while SCE has withdrawn its SOPA support, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Music Nashville are all still listed as in favor of the act. Meanwhile both SCE and Nintendo are members of the Entertainment Software Association, which also remains a supporter.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Google, eBay, PayPal and others were considering an attention-grabbing blackout of their respective sites in the hope of prompting a mass uprising of public complaint about SOPA. The move would follow a similar “call to arms” by microblogging platform Tumblr, which motivated almost 90,000 users to contact their Representatives to discuss the act.

Original Anonymous #OpSony Threat Video:

[via CVG]