Search engines are asked to de-list popular filesharing sites and give higher ranking to authorized sites

At a behind-closed-doors meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, copyright holders have handed out a list of demands to Google, Bing and Yahoo. To curb the growing piracy problem, Hollywood and the major music labels want the search engines to de-list popular filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay, and give higher ranking to authorized sites.

[via TorrentFreak]

The EU and 22 member states sign the controversial ACTA ‘Internet surveillance’ treaty

22 European Union states, and the EU itself, have today signed the controversial ACTA treaty, which critics say could lead to severe restrictions on freedom and civil liberties online. TheNextWeb reports.

As Wired UK reports, at a ceremony in Tokyo, the UK, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden all agreed to adopt ACTA.

ACTA - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trademark Agreement – is a voluntary agreement between nations that covers a wide range of counterfeit goods, both physical and digital. However, it has stirred up controversy for both the secretive ‘behind-closed doors’ way in which it was drafted, and the effect it could have on our online lives. As the Stop Acta campaign site explains, the agreement would make ISPs liable for copyright infringements carried out on their networks, leading to them to introduce surveillance technology to keep tabs on their customers’ online activity. A ‘Three strikes’ policy would also be forced upon Internet users, blacklisting them from ISPs after a series of warnings if they were found to have shared files illegally.

Critics also accuse ACTA of introducing important news laws ‘through the back door’, via a trade agreement which will become binding when ratified, instead of via individual countries introducing their own laws which would have to be debated openly in public. The remaining EU member states are expected to sign soon. Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US are already signed up to the agreement.

However, ACTA isn’t a done deal yet – it still needs to be ratified by the countries that have joined, something that’s not expected in the EU for several months. An opposition movement is gathering pace.

Given the international nature of this agreement, the noise made against the United States’ SOPA and PIPA bills last week could be nothing to what we see against ACTA.

Read full article. Image from Athena Live on ACTA demonstrators in Warsaw.

Help Stop ACTA

What is Acta and why should you be worried about it?

SOPA and PIPA might be on hold for the time-being, but there is a greater threat looming. It's called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and it's an international agreement that aims to establish multinational standards on intellectual property rights enforcement.

Read full article in Wired]

Google Hangouts to watch local news

Google+ recently added video conferencing capabilities to its platform. Like Skype, you may have used Google+ hangouts to talk to your friends face-to-face for free using your computer. But have you used it to watch your local news? Social Times reports.

Google has started rolling out Google+ hangouts On Air to public figures, celebrities and users with large number of followers. Whereas the original Hangouts were limited to groups of ten, with one host and nine participants, the new version allows everyone beyond the participating group to watch the hangout as a YouTube live stream. The host can broadcast the session to specific Google+ Circles or to the public on Google+.

Television stations love it because it’s basically a broadcast tower in the middle of a social network.

Read more.

ACTA vs. SOPA: Five Reasons ACTA is Scarier Threat to Internet Freedom

ACTA may be scarier than SOPA, Internet freedom advocates say, and outrage over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement treaty is growing as it gains international prominence in the wake of the U.S. Congress shelving the Stop Online Piracy Act last week. International Business Times reports.

ACTA opponents, from the EFF to the Anonymous hacktivist collective are coalescing in opposition to the treaty.

Despite these key similarities, the ACTA vs. SOPA debate usually ends up with opponents warning that ACTA is an even graver global threat to the Internet as we know it.

Five reasons why:

1. Scope: The key reason why ACTA is scarier to many online freedom advocates is the fact that it is an international treaty.

2. Transparency: The SOPA debate took place mostly outside of the public eye at first, but because it was taking place in the halls of the U.S. Congress, Internet freedom advocates were able to monitor the proceedings and respond.

But the ACTA treaty is being negotiated almost entirely behind closed doors.

3. Ease of Approval: The SOPA bill was derailed because it required both houses of the U.S. Congress to pass it, and for President Barack Obama to sign it. Once approved, it would have been subject to legal challenge and could have been repealed or amended by future Congresses.

ACTA, on the other hand, was already signed by the United States on Oct. 11, 2011, and Obama was not required to get the approval of any outside authority to do so: not the Congress, not the Supreme Court, and not the American public.

4. Level of Support: Even before the efforts of opponents brought down the controversial legislation, SOPA had only 31 co-sponsors in Congress, meaning it was never a wildly popular bill to begin with. Despite the loud cries that SOPA was threatening the Internet as we know it and that Congress was about to pass it, it was never really that close to being made into law.

ACTA, on the other had, is an international treaty, meaning that it requires unilateral signatures, not votes based at least in part on public opinion. And the Obama administration has already signed it for America.

5. Visibility: The campaign to stop SOPA began relatively early on in its development. By the time it was even able to go to markup in the House Judiciary Committee, opponents were already loudly making their opinions known to a large slice of the Internet-using public.

ACTA, on the other hand, is largely off most people's radars, though it has been under negotiation for about five years.

Read full article.

Rapper Swizz Beatz braces for FBI interview as CEO of Megapuload

Swizz Beatz, the rapper and producer who is married to singer Alicia Keys, is allegedly "bracing himself" for an FBI interview following the arrest of executives at filesharing website Megaupload, where he was listed as CEO.

[via The Guardian]

Polish sites hit in ACTA hack attack

Dear Polish government, we will continue to disrupt and interfere with your government official websites until the 26th. Do not pass ACTA.

— Anonymous ✔ (@AnonymousWiki) January 22, 2012

According to the BBC, online activists have attacked Polish government websites in protest against plans to sign an international copyright treaty.

The websites of the prime minister, parliament and other government offices were all rendered unreachable or sluggish on Sunday.

Critics say the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) could lead to censorship.

The government said it would sign the treaty as planned on Thursday.

Read more.

Storage sites unnerved by Megaupload action

The arrest of Megaupload's founders has led to other file storage sites taking action in an apparent attempt to protect themselves from legal action. And raises legitimate concern over consumers relying on 'cloud' storage for their data. The BBC reports.

Filesonic has disabled its sharing functions, allowing users to access only their own files.

Uploaded.to, which offers a service in which uploaders can receive money depending on how many people download their files, remains fully operational - but US visitors can no longer access its servers.

Other so-called "digital locker" services, such as Switzerland-based Rapidshare, have defended themselves by pointing out their anti-piracy measures.

Megaupload's closure suggested that copyright enforcers were moving away from targeting individual file-sharers as they had done in the past.

"This is all a trend of going towards the facilitators, the organisers of this," Michael Moore, a partner at law firm Marks & Clerk, told the BBC.

Read BBCfull article.

White House petition to end support for ACTA

ACTA is a secretly negotiated copyright treaty that obliges its signatories to take on many of the worst features of SOPA and PIPA. The EU is nearing ratification of it. ACTA was instigated by US trade reps under the Bush Administration, who devised and enforced its unique secrecy regime, but the Obama administration enthusiastically pursued it. This White House petition asks the administration to withdraw its support for the treaty.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is a 'plurilateral' trade agreement, currently being negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. It is somewhat similar to SOPA/PIPA, however ACTA is an executive agreement between countries besides the United States, and it can be passed without the approval from Congress and the Supreme Court. It is potentially hazardous to the Internet we know and how it works.

We need to stop ACTA before it is finally approved by all countries involved. If you value your privacy and you don't want "Big Brother" watching over you, sign this petition and spread the word. Research ACTA and see just how dangerous it is to the Internet, our privacy, and our liberties.

[via boingboing]

Inside the Lavish Life Of Megaupload's Mr. Dotcom

Kim Schmitz legally changed his surname to Dotcom at some point over the last decade, a homage to the technology that made him a millionaire and that has now landed him in a New Zealand jail. The WSJ reports.

The 38-year-old Internet entrepreneur was arrested Thursday at his birthday celebration inside a 25,000-square-foot mansion in Auckland. When police entered the property, Mr. Dotcom fled to a safe room, where he was found with a loaded shotgun, officials said.

... Despite the legal controversy brewing around his website—and a previous conviction for insider trading—Mr. Dotcom didn't lay low or hide anonymously behind his computer.

Rather, Mr. Dotcom openly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. He owned at least 18 luxury cars—including a 1959 pink Cadillac and three cars with vanity license plates that read "HACKER," "MAFIA," and "STONED," according to U.S. officials—flew helicopters, and personally funded the city of Auckland's 2010 New Year's fireworks celebration.

Read full article. Above image from Gizmodo's piece The Best Worst Photos of Megaupload's Kim Dotcom.

Privacy Lawyers Process Megaupload Copyright Case

The Justice Department's massive copyright case against the file-sharing website Megaupload.com had the Internet world hopping this week. But it also got lawyers talking, about the scope of a criminal investigation that spanned eight countries and the hard-nosed tactics that the government deployed. npr reports.

Prosecutors and FBI agents who built the case against Megaupload call it an international crime ring — a racketeering enterprise, like the mob or a drug gang, that made $175 million from pirated movies and music since 2005 and cost copyright holders nearly half a billion dollars more.

... Megaupload has hired megalawyer Bob Bennett, who once represented President Bill Clinton, to make its case in American courts. Bennett told NPR that he intends to "vigorously dispute the charges," which carry huge financial penalties and a 20-year prison term if the executives are convicted.

Orin Kerr, an expert in computer law at George Washington University, says the legal fight is only just beginning.

"There are very complicated jurisdictional questions," Kerr says. "Did the individuals know they were violating United States law? Did that matter? Does it matter that you know you're violating the law in the U.S. even though you're outside the U.S.?

Read full article.

Why Did the Feds Target Megaupload?

There are plenty of players in the no-questions-asked online storage game: HulkShare, MediaFire, YouSendIt. They're all staples of web sharing—and they're all still up and running today. Partly because they're smaller than Megaupload, partly because they're smarter, but mostly because they're don't operate like sloppy drug kingpins. Gizmodo reports.

The Mega Conspiracy crew—which spanned continents, and was lead by flamboyant fatboy millionaire conman Kim Dotcom—was openly, wittingly rich off of copyrighted music. They were flagrant about their intentions to squeeze cash out of Simpsons episodes and 50 Cent albums, rewarding their most piracy-pushing users, laundering money through the site, and spending the cash in the most conspicuous ways imaginable.

Read more.

Senate vote on PIPA is postponed

In the most decisive sign yet that support for controversial antipiracy legislation has collapsed, Sen. Harry Reid issues a statement announcing he has postponed the vote on the Protect IP Act. [via CNet]

In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), in a statement.

Read full article.

How the Internet blackout affected congressional support for PIPA/SOPA

Pro Publica posted a simple/powerful image of the members of Congress' position on SOPA/PIPA today vs. yesterday."

Colbert explains how to deal with Internet censorship protests

EFF: Thank You, Internet! And the Fight Continues

EFF's anti-blacklist crew gathers around laptops showing websites participating in the protest.

The numbers are pretty amazing. More than 1 million messages (and counting!) were sent to Congress Wednesday via the EFF action center. More than 4.5 million people signed Google's petition registering their opposition to the bills. And that's just the beginning.

[EFF via boingboing]

Anonymous goes nuclear; everybody loses?

In the aftermath of Wednesday's SOPA/PIPA blackout protests, the Internet community amassed quite a bit of goodwill, flexed its muscles in a friendly, humorous, civil-disobedience kind of way, and, remarkably, even managed to change quite a few minds. CNet reports.

Just 24 short hours later, Anonymous legions nuked that goodwill and took cyber security into thermonuclear territory. The real question now is: were they played?

... Affected sites include the White House, the FBI, the Department of Justice, multiple record label sites, the MPAA, and RIAA, and the U.S. Copyright Office.

The attacks were spawned by a large-scale indictment and the arrest of four people associated with a hosting and storage site called Megaupload, all accused of online piracy.

In a collective rage, Anonymous lashed out with the force of a cyber-nuke. The display of power is awesome--there will be a lot of high-fiving hackers tonight, that's for sure. And given the massive power of the legions, this story will get more attention in just a few hours than the SOPA/PIPA blackouts ever did.

But then the other shoe will drop.

Read full article.

Feds Shut Down Megaupload.com File-Sharing Website

According to the AP, Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, and charged its founder and others with violating piracy laws.

The indictment accuses the company of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content.

The indictment says at one point, Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.

Read full article.

Culture Film YouTube launches online short film festival

YouTube and the producers of its user-generated film Life in a Day will send 10 winners to the Venice film festival to compete for a $500,000 film-making grant.

[via The Guardian]

PIPA support collapses, with 13 new Senators opposed

Members of the Senate are rushing for the exits in the wake of the Internet's unprecedented protest of the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

At least 13 members of the upper chamber announced their opposition on Wednesday. In a particularly severe blow for Hollywood, at least five of the newly-opposed Senators were previously co-sponsors of the Protect IP Act. (Update: since we ran this story, the tally is up to 18 Senators, of which seven are former co-sponsors.)

[via arstechnica]

4.5 million sign Google's anti-SOPA petition

Over the course of Wednesday, millions of people signed onto Google's petition by clicking on a thick black censorship stamp across its colorful logo. [via CNet]

"The last number we released was at 4:30pm ET," said Google spokesperson Christine Chen. "At that point we were at 4.5 million signatories and counting."

Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.," the petition reads. "Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

Read more.

How much would Facebook, Google or Twitter lose if they shut down for one day?

TheNextWeb has put together a list of some of the Web’s major sites and figured out approximately how much they stood to lose, based on their annual revenue, if they had gone black to protest SOPA.

Google: About $100 million per day if Google had done more than cover its logo.

Facebook: If they closed shop for one day they would lose almost $11.7 million, and angered tons of Facebook users.

eBay: eBay alone would put one day’s loss at almost $28 million, without taking into account each individual seller’s losses.

Amazon: Amazon would have been looking at around $82 million lost in one day.

Yahoo: The company would have missed out on about $11.8 million, but it has far more to worry about these days.

Groupon: Could have lost around $7 million.

Read full article.

What does SOPA mean for us foreigners?

The Stop Online Piracy Act is an American piece of legislation, and as a general rule, American legislation has only limited influence outside US borders. arstechnica reports.

SOPA is a little different from most legislation, however, in that it has an explicit focus on websites that are, in some sense, "foreign." SOPA regulates the dealings between American service providers—most notably search engines, advertising networks, and payment processors (such as PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard)—and foreign sites. Search engines will have to remove listings of offending foreign sites; advertising networks will have to stop selling ads to offending sites; payment processors will have to stop processing payments from Americans for offending sites.

Early versions of the bill also had provisions requiring disruption of DNS services, something that would have had an impact that was felt globally. Fortunately, these provisions have been dropped.

The delineation between foreign and domestic that SOPA makes is arbitrary and inaccurate. Canadians, whose IP address allocations are governed by the US-based ARIN, probably qualify as "domestic," and so may evade SOPA's regulations. So too might the Hong Kong-based MegaUpload, thanks to its dot-com domain name, and similarly the Switzerland-based RapidShare. The Pirate Bay might also escape SOPA's reach, thanks to a dot-org domain name. There's plenty of scope for interference with these sites' operations, through measures such as ICE takedowns. Just not necessarily using SOPA as the justification.

ut most foreign sites—those using domain names registered in non-US registrars, and/or IP addresses allocated by non-US regional Internet registries—are covered by SOPA. If they deal, in whole or in part, with Americans, and if this dealing involves counterfeit medicines or pirated intellectual property, they can find themselves victims of a range of unilateral actions. Search engines could purge them from their listings, and payment processors and advertisers could cut off their revenue streams.

Read more.

Google.com USA blacks out logo in protest of SOPA/PIPA

Today, if you reside in the U.S and you access Google.com, the search giant has blacked out its logo in protest against the SOPA and PIPA, stating that it believes politicians should “end piracy, not liberty” as the bills would “cenesor the Internet and slow economic growth.”

[via TheNextWeb]

Screen Captures of Sites Gone Dark in protest of SOPA/PIPA

Screen Captures of Sites Gone Dark: From top to bottom: Wikipedia.org (engl), boingboing the Australian Pirate Party and Wired.Google.com accessed from the US, shows blacked out logo. Full of Websites Gone Dark to Protest SOPA Wednesday via Mashable.

Web pages have gone black on the Internet before, in protest of the Decency Act in 1996. Read article here.

Reuters Teams With YouTube to Launch Reuters TV Channel

Reuters today announced the launch of Reuters TV, a new YouTube channel featuring 10 news, commentary and analysis programs covering hard news, finance, politics, technology and special Reuters investigations.

The programming, which will appear on Reuters.com and on Reuters redesigned YouTube channel, marks Reuters entry into the rapidly growing business of online video programming, in partnership with one of the biggest players in next-generation TV, YouTube. Reuters is employing a creative editing style that is suited for Internet programming and does not mimic traditional TV.

[via MarketWire]

Congress drops SOPA, pundits warn via Twitter to keep up the fight

According to MacObserver, Congress has dropped SOPA.

President Obama spoke out against SOPA and targeted key parts of the bill that would require domain hosts to block websites suspected of sharing content that’s copyright protected based on little more than a complaint.

Bill supporters responded first by dropping language that required hosting companies to block websites suspected of copyright infringement, then later shelved the entire bill. A new version could, however, find its way back to the debate floor should law makers come to a consensus on wording that’s more to the President’s liking.

While SOPA may be on the back burner for now, a similar bill called the Protect IP Act (PIPA) is still working its way through the Senate.

[via MacObserver]

#SOPA

Reports of#SOPA's demise are premature. Cantor just said won't move forward "till consensus is reached" Keep up the fight!

— Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) January 16, 2012

#SOPA is not dead, only indefinitely shelved. It lives on in #PIPA and will likely be seen renamed in other bills.

— Anonymous (@AnonyOps) January 16, 2012

Hulu to launch first original scripted show

Hulu will broadcast its first original scripted series next month, a political comedy that will debut during the real-life Republican presidential primary.

[via AP]

SOPA On The Ropes: House Delays Vote As Obama Comes Out Against Copyright Bill

[via Forbes]

Late Friday, California representative Darrell Issa announced that the House is holding off on any vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act until a “consensus” can be reached, and that the bill’s creator, Texas representative Lamar Smith, has agreed to remove a portion of the bill that would allow sites to be deleted from the Internet’s domain name system.

“The voice of the Internet community has been heard,” Issa wrote in a statement on the website of the House Committee on Oversight And Government Reform. ” Much more education for Members of Congress about the workings of the Internet is essential if anti-piracy legislation is to be workable and achieve broad appeal.”

Read more.

Murdoch Slams Obama on Twitter For 'Supporting Online Piracy' — Calls Google 'Piracy Leader'

So Obama has thrown in his lot withSilicon Valley paymasters who threaten allsoftware creators with piracy, plain thievery. -

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 14, 2012

Rupert Murdoch's latest tweets accuse President Obama of supporting Google—the "piracy leader"—and the rest of his "Silicon Valley paymasters." The accusations follow a White House blog that expressed doubts about the Stop Online Piracy Act.

He claims that his support to Silicon Valley "pirates" instead of SOPA will destroy US jobs.

Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them.No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 14, 2012

[via Gizmodo]

White House: Obama Won't Support Piracy Bill That 'Undermines' Online Freedom

Great news, Hollywood has a potential new adversary in its effort to pass expansive antipiracy legislation: President Obama.

According to ABC News, as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and complementary bills make their way through Congress, the Obama administration responded today to two online petitions regarding the measures. The petitions, each of which had been signed by more than 51,000 people as of press time, were filed through the White House’s “We the People” online initiative.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that a message posted on a White House blog on Saturday says that the Obama administration acknowledges the threat that foreign websites pose but it “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

The White House's message Saturday comes in response to online petitions cirticizing the proposed law.

Read full article.

'Piracy' student loses US extradition battle over copyright infringement

A judge ruled on Friday that a 23-year-old student can be extradited to the United States for running a website posting links to pirated TV shows and films, despite significant doubts over whether such sites break any UK laws. The Guardian.

The ruling threw Britain's contentious extradition treaty with the US, which critics allege is greatly biased against UK nationals fighting their removal to America, under further scrutiny.

Richard O'Dwyer, a computing student at Sheffield Hallam University, faces a potential 10-year term in a US jail despite never having been to America or using web servers based in the country. When still a teenager O'Dwyer set up a website, TVShack, which posted links to pirated material. It did not directly host any files, which meant, according to the student's lawyers, that it acted as little more than a Google-type search engine and did not breach copyright.

Read full article.

Lawmaker Strips DNS Blocking From SOPA

Rep. Lamar Smith said Friday that he will remove a controversial provision from the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that would have required ISPs to block Web sites with infringing content. PCMag reports.

SOPA targets "rogue" overseas Web sites that traffic in illegal goods, from fake purses to prescription drugs. It would allow the Department of Justice to obtain court orders to go after these Web sites and, before today, would have required ISPs to block sites with infringing content. Detractors, however, were concerned that the bill was too broad and would've targeted legitimate sites.

Though DNS blocking will be removed, SOPA will still allow officials to "follow the money" and cut off payment options to foreign illegal sites, like credit-card processing or PayPal accounts. Search engines like Google and Bing would also still be required to remove infringing Web sites from their search results. Copyright holders could also still bring claims against foreign Web sites that steal their technology, products, or IP.

Read full article.

Faced with SOPA Protest, One Senator Just Blinked

The latest grumblings (or lack thereof) from the lawmakers on Capitol Hill suggest that they're coming around to the idea that the latest anti-piracy efforts in the House and the Senate might've been a little hasty. The Atlantic Wire reports.

Patrick Leahy, a senator from Vermont who co-authored the PROTECT IP anti-piracy bill, posted a press release on Thursday, confessing that his legislation needed "more study" before implementation. It's a sure sign that's he's starting to cave to political pressure -- much of which is coming from the unexpectedly increasingly politically powerful Reddit -- and other lawmakers could follow suit.

Read full article.

The Pirate Bay is immune to SOPA

Over on Techdirt, Mike Masnick has pointed out the mother of all ironies: The Pirate Bay, one of the largest outlets of copyright infringement, would be immune to the takedown tendrils of the imminently incoming Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). ExtremeTech reports.

Apparently it all comes down to the fact that The Pirate Bay has a .org domain — and according to Masnick, the current version of the SOPA bill working its way through congress excludes American domestic domains from being the target of takedown notices from copyright holders. In this case, a “domestic domain” is any domain that comes from a TLD run by an American registry — and sure enough, .org’s registry is Public Interest Registry, a US non-profit based in Virginia. In other words, thepiratebay.org isn’t eligible for a SOPA-based takedown, even if its servers are based in Sweden or another country outside the US.

Believe it or not, by the same logic, .com and .net domains — both of which are managed by American company VeriSign — would also be immune from the SOPA bill as it currently stands.

Presumably the bill distinguishes between domestic and non-domestic domains for legal or political reasons. SOPA was originally designed to target any “US-directed site” — i.e. any site that is accessible from the US — but a recent amendment narrows the target of SOPA down to “foreign internet sites.” If this is really the case, SOPA, as it stands, is toothless.

It's worth noting the same is true of both RapidShare and Megaupload -- two other sites frequently cited by the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce as the types of awful, evil sites that these bills are targeted to take down. In fact, remember that "53 billion visits to rogue websites" claim that the US Chamber of Commerce loves to repeat? Nearly half of that is from RapidShare and Megavideo/Megaupload. And yet, those sites are clearly excluded from SOPA based on the definitions. So why would they still be trotting them out as examples?

Read full article.

Web pages have gone black on the Internet before, in protest of the Decency Act in 1996

Web pages have gone black before, right after Bill Clinton signed the Communication Decency Act on February 8, 1996. The bill included a provision which limited freedom of expression on the Internet.

Yahoo was responsible for spreading the campaign initiated by the Voters Telecommunications Watch, by turning its pages black for 48 hours in support of the Coalition to Stop Net Censorship and linked to instructions for other websites to do the same. Readers were greated on Yahoo with "Why is this page black?"

Also known as Black Thursday, the campaign spread like wildfire, with US websites blacking out their pages one after another, including CNN, Time and The New York Times. The whole thing went unnoticed in Europe. Internet early days, I thought at the time, but here we are 16 years later with SOPA and those protesting against it are not being heard and not being covered by the main press in the US or anywhere else.

Hopefully the Internet's big players will go dark, it's the only way to get attention.

The Communications Decency Act which gave rise to the protest was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on June 26, 1997.

Why Google And Facebook Need To Go Dark To Protest SOPA

Forbes E.D. Kain supports nucelar option to stop SOPA.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and its counterpart in the Senate, the Protect IP Act, represent the greatest threat to a free internet we’ve seen from the US government yet. So far, the internet remains a frontier of innovation, the sharing of ideas, and free-wheeling communities. In many ways its the last unregulated bastion of free commerce in the world. And now it’s under attack.

Paul Tassi‘s call for an internet blackout. Noting that Reddit will go dark next week, Tassi says it’s just not enough and may be preaching to the choir:

That’s where a Google/Facebook blackout would have the power to instantly crush SOPA. If the sites went dark and instead linked to pages explaining the problems with SOPA, and then had links for people to contact Congress, I guarantee it would be the killing blow for the bill. National news agencies which have largely been avoiding covering SOPA because their parent companies support it would be forced to report on the topic, as Facebook and Google going offline would undoubtedly be the biggest tech story of the day, week, month, or possibly the year.

List of Those Expressing Concern With #SOPA and #PIPA

Amazon signs deal with Hollywood to sell moves that can be dowloaded

An Amazon.com executive says the retailer has signed a deal with a Hollywood studio to sell movies that can be downloaded from an online "locker" system four studios have put together. stuff reports.

The extent of Amazon.com's support of the UltraViolet online locker system is unclear. But the deal signals that Amazon is at least open to trying it.

UltraViolet launched late last year. The idea is to enable consumers to play purchased movies, whether downloads or DVDs, on any device.

Read more.

Social Networking Meets Television with MySpace TV

Launching this Spring, MySpace TV plans to stream television content to web-enabled devices (the “coming soon” site mentions “watching on a TV, laptop, tablet or smartphone”), accompanied by a number of interactive features to tie the content into the site’s social aspect.

Why just ‘watch’ TV when you can experience TV?” the site explains, “MySpace TV gives you more information about your favorite shows, videos and artists, and provides you real-time engagement with your friends to get you closer to the shows you love.

[via TIME Techland]

Change your Twitter picture to a black banner Stop SOPA

If you've been on Twitter today, chances are you've seen a change in some of the avatars. The San Francisco Gate explains why.

Instead of regular pictures, about 2,500 people have changed their images to a black banner that says STOP SOPA using BlackoutSOPA.org.

Blackout SOPA was created by Hunter Walk and Gregor Hochmuth yesterday at noon, so it has caught on pretty quickly.

If you want to change your picture, visit www.blackoutsopa.org, authorize the app on your Twitter account, and choose one of three "Stop SOPA" templates. You can easily revert to your original picture if you decide to stop supporting the cause.

Tom Hanks to announce Web Series project at CES

Tom Hanks will launch a futuristic animated series for the Web called Electric City on Yahoo later this spring. It will be announced at CES on Tuesday.

Hanks' production company Playtone will produce, along with Reliance Entertainment, the 90-minute series, set to be broadcast online in 20 segments. It will be the first original scripted program for Yahoo.

[via USA Today]

Fox Planning New Animated Shows for On Air and Online

According to The Wall Street Journal, Fox Broadcasting is planning a new block of animated TV shows to air on Saturday nights and to be made available on the Internet through mobile device apps and game consoles, as traditional TV companies look to build web businesses.

The new block will comprise four full-length shows per season starting in January 2013, but also dozens of short-form shows.

Read full article.