Displaying items by tag: SOPA

SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TIPA, and more acronyms than most people care to think about are what is in the news. All of these pieces of legislation are designed with one thought in mind; to control the Internet. Now this may sound like little more than a crazed conspiracy theory, but it is not. You see right now the Internet represents a real threat to many businesses (and governments).

Well we all knew it had to start somewhere. The possibility that some democracy would forget the concept of free speech and free and open communication was always there. I do not think that anyone thought it was going to be the UK though. Unfortunately a judge in the UK has ordered all ISPs in the UK to manually block access to the Pirate Bay website.

It seems that Microsoft is working the PR angle again. First we saw this when it was obvious that public opinion was turning against it with SOPA and PIPA. They distanced themselves from the BSA (Business Software Alliance) and then released a statement saying that they could not support SOPA in its current incarnation. This time Microsoft is doing the PR shift with CISPA. They released a statement to CNET saying pretty much the same thing while not really opposing the actual bill or its ramifications.

Well we knew it would come to this, despite growing outcry against the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act the House of Representatives (who are they representing?) is holding a debate on this controversial bill. We have talked about CISPA in the past and the bills that led up to what is nothing more than a revocation of your right to private communication in the past and what the implications of a bill so loosely outlined will mean in the coming months.

During the last few years the corporate world has enjoyed something of a respite from the typical anti-trust laws that are upheld by the Sherman Antitrust Act. This means that things like the MPAA, RIAA, the Viacom merger and too many others to count have all gotten the thumbs up from regulators. It was not until the Occupy movements hit the streets in major towns that we began to see regulation agencies begin to take notice of some of the more outrageous violations. It was as if they suddenly woke up and said “Hey! You can’t do that…” of course it is an election year and the majority of voters are very unhappy. The incumbent politicians have to at least appear to be doing something.

If there is one thing that you can say Anonymous has done that has a measurable positive effect it is exposing the level of Corporate and Government Ignorance. Ignorance is not an admissible excuse any longer in this day and age and is often used in court when someone says they did not know they were breaking the law. Since this is generally accepted why is anyone willing to give companies that show massive amounts of ignorance (which is just really lack of forethought or cost cutting) when it is discovered that their systems are not secure? We are shocked that this is at all acceptable considering the data breaches going back as far as 2009. Still we continually hear about this product or that network is suddenly discovered to be insecure. Exactly how is that possible?

Looking at bills like SOPA, PIPA and CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) it is easy to see the argument for Civil Liberties, Censorship, Personal Privacy and Private Communications. In fact we hear about this on a daily basis from groups like Anonymous, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future and more. However, while all of these arguments are very valid and ring in the ears of voters and consumers everywhere there is another threat that many are overlooking. This threat might even be larger than the ones that are talked about over and over; the security threat.

The war for and against SOPA has once again heated up. We have already told you that the entertainment industry, content owners, and lawmakers are working very hard to push through legislation to get what they want (control of the internet as a means of distribution of their content). It does not matter that the simple act of do this violates many Civil Liberties or that it represents a violation of the very basic tenants of the existing Anti-Trust laws that we have. Now only a few days after Chris Dodd let slip that the MPAA is working to reopen SOPA (or something worse) we find that a new power lobby has sprung up from the ground to take the banner of censorship and wave it.

In mid-January the battle over SOPA and PIPA hit a peak with an unprecedented show of opposition. We saw Wikipedia go dark for the day while other large site put black censored bars over their logos. At the end of this the SOPA and PIPA backers in the Senate and the House of Representatives decided they needed to change their direction. Lamar Smith, the sponsor for SOPA made the official announcement that SOPA was being shelved. Many hailed this announcement as a victory, but it seems they did not see the finger crossed behind Smith’s back.

If you ever needed evidence of how badly laws like PIPA and SOPA (and of course ACTA) could and would be abused you have to look no further than some of the laws that are already in place. We have shown you how the lawyers for the entertainment industry have (and continue to do so) violated due process and circumvented even court orders to get what they want. Now we have Spain’s Sinde Law as a direct show of how eager the content “owners” are to pull down sites or simply make complaints.