Online privacy is a big issue in the US and around the world. Every day we as consumers dump information about ourselves into the web in the form of email, texts, tweets, Facebook updates, documents purchasing habits and more. We put our trust in the companies that maintain that data and have faith that the laws that should protect our private information are being followed and even more to the point enforced. Sadly it seems that we have never really had a right to have our personal information protected after it leaves our computers and enters the Internet.

Times they are a changing... There once was a time when the FCC working to make sure that the cable companies were not trying to take advantage of consumers. We saw them push a series of regulations that prohibited the cable companies that were also ISPs from throttling bandwidth. These were followed by more regulations that prevented the same companied from favoring their own services when it came to traffic caps. It really looked like the consumer had a friend in the FCC. Unfortunately all of that changed in the last few months. We have seen them reverse some of the same decisions that they made only a year ago. Now they have done it again and are allowing cable companies to force you to pay rent on the set-top boxes that are required to view premium channels.

The U.S. Patent Office rejected Apple's request for registration of the name iPad mini. The reason is because the name does not describe the product well enough. Apple has already registered the name iPad, and the addition of the suffix "mini" is almost no different from the original name, according to the patent office.

After Anonymous pulled their support from WikiLeaks many thought the group would drift off into obscurity. After all, many in the press still think that Anonymous was formed after WikiLeaks started, so why not have that misguided opinion. The reality is that Anonymous existed long before WikiLeaks, and will continue to exist when WikiLeaks is a long forgotten memory. The collective (there is no leader despite what you might here from other media sources) has matured in many ways though, and does not appear to be hell-bent on hitting every single site that annoys them anymore. At least that is what we are seeing: there will always be members who will lash out or simply try to hack a site for the fun of it, but the collective has calmed for the most part.

If you never thought that Copyright was out of hand then you might be interested to know that Copyright laws are being use to stomp on your right as a consumer to choose the mobile carrier you want and take any devices that you might own with you. The mobile phone industry (hand in hand with the carriers) is trying to put the baseband locks on a phone into the realm of copyrighted material. The way they are doing this is by claiming that the locks protecting the baseband are the same as those found on a DVD or Blu-ray disk. Since they have convinced the US lawmakers that this is so we now find that unlocking your phone (any phone) is illegal and punishable by a minimum of $2,500.

Saturday marked the day that Megaupload was reborn in the form of Mega. It was an event that has had much talk since Kim Dotcom first announced that he would be doing this last year. It is also an event that many internet users have been looking forward to for a very long time. On the other side of the coin the content industry (including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA and others) have not been looking forward to this and have tried to make the tired old argument that ALL file sharing services are nothing more than a haven for piracy.

Over the last couple of days we have talked about the expected push from the copyright lobby for harsher laws and longer copyright periods (not to mention more control over the internet). This is a campaign that has been going on since the days of affordable internet (56kbps) and is one that will never really stop. However during this long battle there have been some highlights that make us all wonder at the motives and sanity of the key players involved. We are talking about the many domain seizures (for sites that are operating legally) and also some of the highly publicized threats that the MPAA (the leading group in this war) have made over the course of the last year.

Although the war for a free and open internet has fallen out of the front page news there are still rumblings about it going on in the background as the MPAA, RIAA BSA and other organizations gear up for another round of attacks on the internet as we know it. We expect to see Chris Dodd come back to “the hill” and catch up with his old buddies that are still in active service with the US government. His goal this time will be to get bills like SOPA and PIPA reborn and pushed through in back room deals instead of trying to get things done openly and honestly. What we find interesting is that the MPAA, RIAA and BSA have been using the same old arguments and logic for almost 10 years to no avail, what arguments are they going to us this time, or will they simply make promises to get what they want…

Scientists from the U.S. and from around the world went into an internet campaign on Twitter posting links to PDF files of scientific research in honor of the late Aaron Swartz who believed that access to such data should be free for all. Swartz was faced with a lawsuit because of his attempts to share scientific papers from JSTOR's. The lawsuit was $4 million in fines and 50 years in prison for allegedly "stealing" from a database, but in fact he had the legal right to access those papers.

You know you have to love the way the US Government acts in some of their dealings. There are times when they simply do not understand the implications of what they are doing… well either that or they have no respect for the intelligence of the common person. We are talking about a “new” development in the US DOJ’s case against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom. This trial has already become famous simply due to its timing and also for the inappropriate raid on the Dotcom mansion. Although the case has slipped out of the mainstream media many are still watching with great interest due to the siege tactics and the way the US has violated the laws in New Zealand (and possibly in the US).