11.18.11
Links – SOPA round up.
Reader’s Picks
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Google vs. Microsoft: Not All Clouds Are Created Equal
According to Google, all this has led over 4 million businesses to adopt Google Apps, with 5,000 jumping aboard each day, and during his Monday morning speech, Singh made a point of saying that “thousands” of these daily converts summarily switch off servers running Microsoft software.
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Bitcoin: FBI Admits To Engaging In Infiltration, Disruption and Dismantling of Competing Currencies
In the press release, the FBI equates the use of sound money to an act of domestic terrorism. The FBI states that it uses methods of infiltration and disruption against private citizens engaged in the use of voluntary currencies.
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Finance
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Censorship
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Congress Declares War on the Global Internet – Internet Replies “Bring It On!”
It’s certain that this war could bring with it many causalities. Network fragmentation in various forms is an obvious example, since the rest of the world seems unwilling (surprise!) to allow the U.S. to keep dictating Internet policy forever … All manner of “workarounds” to such censorship are being proposed, many extremely intriguing, most of which would actually be illicit under the anti-circumvention provisions of SOPA. … [Congress] will be setting loose the technological dogs of war in ways that are beyond the scope of their darkest nightmares, and that make “Anonymous” and the “Occupy” movement look like fleas on an elephant by comparison.
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At Web censorship hearing, Congress guns for “pro-pirate” Google
The House Judiciary Committee today held an important hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act with a hugely stacked deck of witnesses—Google’s lawyer was the only one of the six to object to the bill in a meaningful way. … This wasn’t a hearing designed to elicit complex thoughts about complex issues of free speech, censorship, and online piracy; despite the objections of the ACLU, dozens of foreign civil rights groups, tech giants like Google and eBay, the Consumer Electronics Association, China scholar Rebecca MacKinnon, hundreds of law professors and lawyers, the hearing was designed to shove the legislation forward and to brand companies who object as siding with “the pirates.”
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Issa back peddles SOPA
“This is a very broad coalition from far left to far right who realize this will hurt innovation, something we can’t afford to do. And there are other ways to accomplish what they say is their goal” … Issa said he believes the bill can’t be fixed, and argued it doesn’t use the best tools for settling disputes regarding foreign sites. … the bill’s sponsors didn’t want to hear from opponents, but argued those lawmakers must now accept that there is real opposition to their bill.
The problem was not the method and unintended consequences, it was the goal and how transparent it was.
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RIAA submits a “hit list” of sites for the US to shut down.
This last example shows that the definition of infringing sites can become very subjective down the line. It only requires a little creative writing to make half of the websites on the Internet appear as a rogue site, and thus eligible to be shut down.
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Why SOPA Censorship Is Actually Aimed at Google
A simple thought experiment reveals why SOPA’s model will fail to control piracy as its proponents wish, and why calls for its vast expansion — primarily aimed at censoring Google — can be anticipated. … let’s imagine that a large number of sites unrelated to “pirated” files, but sympathetic to free speech concerns, decided that they’d each list (on a sort of “by the way” basis) just a few — perhaps even one each — IP address links to “forbidden” material … The reaction of censorship proponents would seem predictable — they would demand that Google and other search engines remove pages/sites from search results even if there’s a single mention … search engines are crucial agents toward helping to assure free speech on the Net, and so will be under constant attack by those forces who wish to restrict speech
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EU Adopts Resolution Against US Domain Seizures
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution which criticizes domain name seizures of “infringing” websites by US authorities. According to the resolution these measures need to be countered as they endanger “the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication.”
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Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT
Microsoft did not sign but Yahoo and Facebook proxies did. Will there be chair throwing?
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Privacy
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Facebook tracking of members and non members is finally noticed by mainstream US press.
I have intentionally not linked to the article because it is poorly written, light on technical details and smears Google as equivalent to Facebook, Adobe and Microsoft.
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