Sunday, January 22, 2012

Long Reach of SOPA, PIPA Legislation Worried International Observers - eWeek

The week when Wikipedia's English edition went dark, it was only the most visible sign of a great level of global concern about the attempts by U.S. lawmakers to assert their views of copyright law on the rest of the world. One of the provisions of the two proposed laws would give judges in the United States the power to authorize U.S. law enforcement officers to effectively take down foreign Websites that were alleged to contain pirated content.

Under the proposed legislation, the method of taking these sites offline varies. In some cases, a judge could order search engines to stop serving up results from allegedly offending sites. In other cases, payment processing sites could be ordered to stop processing payments, which would kill them just as effectively. Worse, halting the payment processing action would only require an assertion by someone who claimed to be a copyright holder who issued a letter giving five days' warning. No judicial review would be required.

I learned about the depths of these concerns during a series of appearances on foreign talk shows. In conversations with journalists involved with Al Jazeera's "Inside Story" show there were questions about why the entire U.S. legal system was catering to a relatively small set of interests. On Russia Today's "Crosstalk" program, there were similar questions. But while preparing for the show, I heard many concerns about why the United States thought it should be able to impose its laws on foreign countries.

Part of the reason for concern is that the United States and other countries already have treaties in place regarding copyrights, and those treaties work, as was clearly shown in the takedown of the Megaupload site on Jan. 19. In that massive bust, the FBI along with authorities from a number of other countries detained the principals of the site and took the site and all of its related domains offline.

So the obvious question arises. If this capability already exists, why do we need SOPA and PIPA? The reason that was given publicly is that sometimes it's hard to actually find the people responsible for rogue sites. But it seems that after some investigation, law enforcement was able to coordinate the action over several countries on multiple continents. Perhaps this would have been able to take place more easily with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or Protect IP Act (PIPA) in place, but clearly it's possible without them.

This isn't the first time such a coordinated arrest has taken place, although the Megaupload bust was by far the biggest. But what else were the backers of SOPA and PIPA looking for? For one thing, they don't want to have to wait for a year while the whole thing is investigated and coordinated. They want a site that they think is handling pirated material taken down in days.

Petition Seeks Probe of MPAA 'Bribery' Over SOPA - PCWorld

A petition to investigate alleged bribery of politicians by the Motion Picture Association of America was created Saturday at the activist website "We the People" by a Texas man.

The petition, which has garnered nearly 7000 signatures in the first day after it was posted January 21, calls on the Obama Administration to investigate MPAA CEO Chris Dodd, a former U.S. senator, and his organization for remarks he made on a cable news network.

According to "Michael L," the creator of the petition, Dodd's remarks on Fox News were "open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal." A section of the White House site invites people to create petitions and gather signatures on any issue.

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd said in a interview with Fox News, according to the cable network's website. "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," Dodd said.

Chris Dodd, MPAA CEO

Dodd's remarks were made as support began crumbling for two anti-piracy bills in the Congress being pushed by the movie and recording lobbies, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Support began unraveling for the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate after a mass online demonstration which included the shutdown of Wikipedia for a day, was launched by opponents of the legislation.

That move also sparked the wrath of Dodd. He accused the technology companies behind the protest of "resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns."

He declared that the protest "is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today."

"A so-called 'blackout' is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals," he added.

Threatening to withhold campaign contributions from diligent elected officials who don't do what you want them to apparently isn't as dangerous a gimmick as closing down Wikipedia for a day in Dodd's mind.

SOPA bill shelved after global protests from Google, Wikipedia and others - Washington Post

Just two days after broad Web protests of the proposed anti-piracy bills known as SOPA and PIPA, lawmakers have delayed action on the measures. Hayley Tsukayama reports:

The main sponsor of a House bill targeting online piracy announced Friday that he will postpone further action on the measure that has triggered fierce protests, blackouts from Internet sites and some rethinking among lawmakers.

The action by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) on the Stop Online Piracy Act came a couple of hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that he would delay a cloture vote on a similar Senate bill, the Protect IP (Intellectual Property) Act.

The bills are intended to narrowly address the problem of piracy on foreign Web sites. They differ slightly, but both measures grant the Justice Department the power to order Web sites to remove links to sites that are suspected of pirating copyrighted materials. Proponents of the legislation, including movie studios and recording companies, say that the bill safeguards American intellectual property and protects consumers against counterfeit goods. But opponents argue that the legislation gives the federal government too much power to take control of Web sites and amounts to a form of Internet censorship.

“I have heard from the critics, and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said in a statement. “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 decisions came just two days after prominent Web sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit darkened their sites for 24 hours in protest and, along with others, such as Google, encouraged visitors to urge their Congress members not to support the bill. The sites collected signatures from millions of users opposed to the measures, and several co-sponsors of the measures withdrew their support of the online piracy legislation.

Smith said the House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation. Markup on the bill, which began in December, had been slated to continue in February.

Smith had remained firm in his resolve to move ahead with discussion of the bill earlier this week but said Friday that he is willing to work with copyright owners and Internet companies to develop a consensus on the best approach to stopping piracy on the Web.

Sen. Ron Wyden called the delays a major victory for grassroots advocacy groups. Greg Sargent writes:

In a huge victory for grassroots online organizing, the Senate Dem leadership announced this morning that it was indefinitely postponing votes on the PIPA bill — the companion to SOPA — in the wake of massive protests.

The next question: Does the Senate Dem leadership really understand that its approach was a major threat to what makes the Internet a democratic force and that it needed a complete overhaul?

I just got off the phone with Senator Ron Wyden, the primary driver of opposition to the bill within the Senate, and he confirmed that the leadership grasps the depth of the problems with its approach, and is ready to address them head on.

SOPA, PIPA supporters won't back down - ZDNet Australia

Opponents of a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright Bills won a temporary reprieve last week, when upcoming votes in the US Senate and House of Representatives were postponed.

Opponents of a pair of Hollywood-backed copyright Bills took to the streets last week in San Francisco and other cities.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

However, the lobbyists and politicians backing the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) haven't given up.

"We must take action to stop" online piracy and counterfeiting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said late last week. Reid, who previously called PIPA an "extremely important" piece of legislation, said he believed that it could move forward "in the coming weeks".

Reid's comments came after last week's historic online protest — Wikipedia going dark for a day, alerts appearing on the home page of Google and Amazon — roiled Washington officialdom and obliterated long-held assumptions about whether it would be politically safe to advance a measure opposed by millions of internet users.

The danger for the anti-SOPA contingent is that over time, when last week's outcry recedes into memory, Hollywood and its allies will regroup around a new Bill with a different name, but only a slightly different approach. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) may have lost this round, but dozens of US senators are still publicly applauding the idea, and, if history is any indication, the MPAA is willing to wait.

"I expect this threat to resurface," said Jerry Moran of Kansas, the first Republican Senator to oppose PIPA.

Some of Hollywood's closest allies are promising that it will happen. PIPA "deserves to be considered", Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said. PIPA's author, Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said that he hopes "to send a Bill to the president's desk this year".

For its part, the MPAA sounded unapologetic and unrepentant. "As a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves, [and] American jobs will continue to be lost," MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd said in a statement. Dodd initially dismissed the protests as "stunts".

The unrepentant tone was shared by a collection of groups, including the American Federation of Musicians, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. They said in a joint statement that critics of the legislation have offered an "onslaught of mistruths" to the public.

Texas Republican Lamar Smith, Hollywood's favourite House Republican and the author of SOPA, said that he would delay a vote on his legislation — but warned that it is only a delay. The House Judiciary Committee "remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation", said Smith, who counts Hollywood as thetop donor to his campaign committee.

Reason Google Anti-SOPA

fudzilla.com - In what may possibly become known as one of the darkest days of Web history over the past three years, the war between US Congress and citizens of the free world against the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act has almost come to an end, with the conclusion leaning in favor of protestors across the globe.

According to the latest analytics from Google, the company received a total of 4.5 million petition signatures on Wednesday, January 19, 2012 in response to the anti-SOPA petition on its homepage yesterday. As millions of Google users noticed, the site's homepage displayed a large black strip censoring the "Google" logo as a visual metaphor of the harmful possibilities that SOPA and PIPA could induce on Internet innovation, culture, creativity and the global information economy.

A link below the blackout read "Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!" and lead to the following petition page.

"There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs," the petition read. "Too much is at stake -– please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA."

In addition to Google's petition, the White House Blog reports that 103,785 people have signed petitions urging US President Obama to protect a free and open Internet. At time of writing, at least 350,000 Americans have also sent emails to their local representatives in the House and Senate.

Protest actions Black Out Day For Killing SOPA

ARTICLE FROM WIKIPEDIA - BIGGEST ONLINE ENSIKLOPEDIA

On November 16, 2011, Tumblr, Mozilla, Techdirt, the Center for Democracy and Technology were among many Internet companies that protested by participating in American Censorship Day. They displayed black banners over their site logos with the words "STOP CENSORSHIP."

Google linked an online petition to its site, and says it collected more than 7 million signatures from the United States.

Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition, told Fox News that “a number of companies have had discussions about [blacking out services]” last week and discussion of the option spread to other media outlets.

In January 2012, Reddit announced plans to black out its site for twelve hours on January 18, as company co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced he was going to testify to Congress. "He’s of the firm position that SOPA could potentially 'obliterate' the entire tech industry," Paul Tassi wrote in Forbes. Tassi also opined that Google and Facebook would have to join the blackout to reach a sufficiently broad audience. Other prominent sites that are reported to be participating in the January 18 blackout are Cheezburger Sites, Mojang, Major League Gaming, Boing Boing, BoardGameGeek, XKCD, SMBC and The Oatmeal.

Wider protests were considered and in some cases committed to by major internet sites, with high profile bodies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, Reddit, Mozilla, LinkedIn,IAC, eBay, PayPal, Wordpress and Wikimedia being widely named as "considering" or committed to an "unprecedented" internet blackout on January 18, 2012 On January 17 a Republican aide on Capitol Hill said that the protests were making their mark, with SOPA having already become "a dirty word beyond anything you can imagine."

A series of pickets against the bill were held at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Two picketers were arrested.

Some SOPA supporters complained that the bill was being misrepresented amidst the protests. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said, "It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users and arm them with misinformation," a sentiment echoed by RIAA CEO Cary Sherman who said "it’s very difficult to counter the misinformation when the disseminators also own the platform." referring to Google and Facebook.

On 21 January, 2012 RT news reported, "Bill Killed: SOPA death celebrated as Congress recalls anti-piracy acts". . The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a rights advocacy non-profit group, confirmed the protests were the biggest in Internet history, with over 115 thousand sites altering their webpages.

Wikipedia blackout

Main article: English Wikipedia blackout


The English-language Wikipedia page on January 18, 2012, illustrating its international blackout in opposition to SOPA.		Sue Gardner at the Wikimedia Foundation on the evening of January 17, 2012, discussing the English Wikipedia Blackout

The English Wikipedia blackout occurred for 24 hours on January 18–19, 2012. In place of articles, the site showed only a message in protest of SOPA and PIPA asking visitors to "Imagine a world without free knowledge.". It is estimated in excess of 160 million people saw the banner. A month earlier, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Walesinitiated discussion with editors regarding a potential knowledge blackout, a protest inspired by a successful campaign by the Italian-language Wikipedia to block the Italian DDL intercettazioni bill, terms of which could have infringed the encyclopedia's editorial independence. Editors and others mulled interrupting service for one or more days as in the Italian protest, or alternatively presenting site visitors with a blanked page directing them to further information before permitting them to complete searches.= On January 16 it was announced that the English-language Wikipedia would be blacked out for 24 hours on January 18.

Wikinews has related news:Wikinews interviews Sue Gardner on Wikipedia blackout

The Daily Mail estimated that 7,000 smaller websites either joined in the blackout for the day or posted some kind of protest at the proposed legislation.

SOPA's sponsor in the House, Chairman Smith, called Wikipedia's blackout a "publicity stunt" saying that "It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act." Smith went on to insist that SOPA "will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites."

Digital protest

Anonymous group protesters in iconic guy-fawkes masks

On January 19, 2012, Megaupload, a website providing file sharing services, was shut down by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This led to what Anonymous called "the single largest Internet attack in its history". Barrett Brown, described as a spokesperson for the group Anonymous by news outlet RT, said the timing of the raid "couldn’t have come at a worse time in terms of the government’s standpoint". With the SOPA protests only a day old, it was claimed that internet users were "by-and-far ready to defend an open Internet".

Brown told RT that the Department of Justice website was shut down only 70 minutes after the start of the attack. The attack disabled a number of websites, including those belonging to the Justice Department, the FBI, Universal Music Group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and Broadcast Music, Inc. "Even without SOPA having been passed yet, the federal government always had tremendous power to do some of the things that they want to do. So if this is what can occur without SOPA being passed, imagine what can occur after SOPA is passed," Brown commented.= Some commentators and observers have asserted that the FBI shut down of Megaupload proves that SOPA and PIPA are unnecessary

Although the actions of Anonymous received support, some commentators argued that the denial of service attack risked damaging the anti-SOPA case.

Protests to other legislation

According to Polskie Radio, Polish Wikipedia is considering a blackout similar to the SOPA-inspired 2012 Wikipedia blackout to protest Poland's plan to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement(ACTA).= ACTA is a pending international treaty concerning enforcement of digital copyright law, which the United States signed in October 2011.= After Poland's January 19 announcement it would sign the treaty on January 26, a number of Polish government websites, including that of the President and Polish Parliament, were shut down by denial of service attacks that started January 21.=

Sopa Update