Web companies beg Congress to “step back” from IP legislation
Hoping to amplify the voice of the Internet, web companies including Mozilla, Reddit, and WordPress have banded together with public interest and human rights groups to urge Congress to stop its work on intellectual property laws.
Monday, more than 70 organizations signed an open letter addressed to the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“Now is the time for Congress to take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a fresh perspective,” the … Continue Reading
Top 5 reasons to support SOPA
You’re likely a little sick of hearing about SOPA by now. I know I’m sure as hell tired of writing about it. But yesterday, everyone from Google to Wikipedia protested the highly controversial bill, commonly resulting in a blackout of sites frequented daily by millions of users all around the world. It doesn’t matter how big of a rock you live under; if you didn’t know about SOPA before, you know about it now. I … Continue Reading
SOPA blackouts and protests go live (gallery of screenshots)
A handful of U.S. websites have decided to go dark today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act as well as its senate cousin the Protect IP Act — two piece of proposed legislation aimed at curbing piracy efforts abroad.
Perhaps the most vocal protester of the bunch is search engine giant Google, which has decided to update its homepage with a large sideways black box over the company’s logo. Since the site prides … Continue Reading
Which anti-SOPA game companies are fighting back, and how
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) have definitely gotten the Internet’s attention, but not in the good Elmo orders Taco Bell sort of way. This is more like Rebecca Black announcing she’s obtained the license to the entire library of The Beatles music.
The two bills have lovers of all things Internet immensely concerned, with many people claiming that if either one passes, the current everyday freedoms we enjoy, including … Continue Reading
Founders of Reddit, Veoh and Craigslist join forces in anti-SOPA/PIPA discussion
In advance of testifying at a congressional hearing tomorrow, a group of technology industry leaders participated in a public discussion about the ill effects of the proposed SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy legislation.
The discussion, held in Washington D.C. today and sponsored by lobbyist group P Street, included such panelists as Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Scribd founder Jared Friedman, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures Brad Burnham, Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro, and … Continue Reading
Wikipedia founder defends SOPA blackout; Twitter has other protest plans in the works
After announcing yesterday that Wikipedia will join other websites in a January 18 blackout to protest the SOPA piracy bill, founder Jimmy Wales has explained his reasoning further to fend off criticism.
Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (pictured) caught flack last night when he seemingly criticized Wikipedia’s blackout decision, only to clarify his position later. Twitter won’t be blacking out its service, but Costolo says he has something else planned to protest SOPA and its … Continue Reading
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart takes on SOPA & the Internet
Jon Stewart, host of the popular comedy “news” program The Daily Show, is finally going to tackle SOPA, the controversial, anti-Internet piece of legislation that has every social network up in arms.
“Tomorrow night,” the host said during last night’s broadcast, “our guest will be the Internet.”
A redditor was present at the taping of last night’s show, and during the pre-show period, he asked Stewart why he’d been silent on SOPA.
If you
Reddit goes black Jan. 18 to protest SOPA & PIPA — Who else will join?
Community news sharing site Reddit is planning to shut down its website January 18 in protest of proposed legislation the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as well as the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), the company announced via a blog post today.
SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. Should SOPA (or PIPA) pass, it could drastically … Continue Reading
Go Daddy gives into pressure, comes out against SOPA
Domain and hosting site Go Daddy just announced that it no longer supports the recently proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
The statement (pasted below) comes after the intense backlash Go Daddy received yesterday from customers and Internet critics after it appeared on an official list of companies supporting SOPA. Not only did Go Daddy issue a statement on its new stance, but it’s also compulsively responding to any comments on Twitter referencing a Go … Continue Reading
Reddit grabs a record 1.9B page views in October — Holy eyeballs Batman
It seems all the people who keep Reddit open in a permanent tab on their web browser (myself included) are really starting to add up for the community news sharing site.
Reddit brought in more than 1.9 billion page views and had over 29 million unique visitors during the month of October, according to Reddit General Manager Erik Martin (a.k.a. Hueypriest). That’s an estimated 55 percent increase in page views compared to May 2011, which … Continue Reading
Hey local businesses, Reddit is giving out free ads
In terms of active online communities, Reddit takes the cake. So, the announcement that the site is giving local businesses free advertising spots is a big deal.
The news sharing site, which gets over a billion page views per month, harbors an abundance of small subreddits — which are sub-sites within Reddit based on one unifying subject, like cities, states or colleges. The local subreddits have a much smaller following (2,000 to 9,000 subscribers) compared … Continue Reading
Get tips from Y Combinator alumni at Grubwithus dinners
Grubwithus, the Y Combinator startup that lets you book group meals with strangers, has opened registration for its second round of get-to-know-you meals featuring successful alumni of the startup accelerator. The meals, which will take place in November, are happening in seven cities across the U.S., and spots are selling out fast.
“Last time we did it, they sold out so quickly, we didn’t have enough,” Sen Sugano, director of business development at Grubwithus, told … Continue Reading
UberMedia launches Twitter/Digg/Reddit/Facebook clone Chime.in
UberMedia CEO Bill Gross isn’t dodging the fact that his latest app, Chime.in, is a patchwork of other successful apps.
“It’s an amalgam of blogging and Reddit and Facebook — there’s aspects of each in there,” he told VentureBeat in a phone interview last week.
“We’re definitely borrowing those good ideas. But this is a deeper dive into their interests and intelligent conversations around [users'] passions.”
The Chime.in site will launch tomorrow, but the app … Continue Reading
Digg delivers automatically curated news content with new Newsrooms
News aggregation site Digg unveiled Newsrooms today, a new section of the site that features automatically curated news content on specific topics like technology or politics.
Here’s how it works: Digg takes content from a number of sites it curates, such as tech news blogs and news sites, and adds it directly to the “Newswire” in each Newsroom. Digg ranks those stories by how new they are and how much of a “signal” they have … Continue Reading
Condé Nast spins off Reddit. “Nothing is off-limits,” says co-founder
Publishing corporation Condé Nast has spun off news aggregator Reddit.com into a fully-owned subsidiary that will operate autonomously from the company, the site announced today.
Reddit is still owned by Advanced Publishing, which owns Condé Nast, but Advance will not be directly involved with day-to-day activities as Condé Nast was, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told VentureBeat. Condé Nast will also make an investment in Reddit, he said. Ohanian will now serve as a member of … Continue Reading
How a viral trailer set up Dead Island as a triple-A game release next week
Dead Island is one of the most anticipated games of the fall gaming season. It comes out next week — and you probably wouldn’t know about it if it weren’t for a gritty, visceral game trailer that went viral thanks to social media and word of mouth.
Dead Island is a survival horror game that drops you on a zombie-filled island in the middle of a massive storm that has cut you off from the … Continue Reading
Reddit begins holiday shopping season early, acquires Redditgifts.com
News sharing social network Reddit has acquired Redditgifts.com, a popular independent gift exchange site created by Reddit community members, the company announced Tuesday.
Redditgifts is best known for organizing the world’s largest Secret Santa gift exchange and the mid-summer arbitrary gift giving event (appropriately named) Arbitrary Day. More recently, the site has organized specific exchanges for books, crafts and snacks.
“We’ve been in close contact with Redditgifts for about a year. Not (to talk) about … Continue Reading
Reddit turns its attention to collegiate communities
While news-sharing site Reddit harbors many unique communities such as rage comic lovers, zombie aficionados, geeks and several others, its low on robust college communities — which is strange considering that a large percentage of Reddit’s total users are either students or recent graduates with lots of collegiate pride.
The company announced a global competition Wednesday to boost the number of active college-related community sub-sites on Reddit (called Subreddits). Three subreddits with the highest level … Continue Reading
Programmer accused of stealing 4 million documents in MIT hack
A 24-year-old programmer and online political activist could face up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine after being indicted on charges that he stole more than four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and JSTOR, a nonprofit archive of scientific journals and academic papers.
That programmer is Aaron Swartz, a popular expert in Internet academic circles. He is the founder and former director of Demand Progress, a nonprofit … Continue Reading
Reddit’s former information cowboy joins Netflix
News aggregator Reddit’s first systems engineer and employee number one Jeremy Edberg has joined video rental and streaming company Netflix.
He is joining the company as the “lead cloud reliability” engineer — a prod at the company’s recent history of infrequent downtimes — he announced on his Twitter account. Edberg also indicated that the “cloud reliability” team was hiring.
Edberg recently left Reddit after working at the site for 4 years to pursue personal projects, … Continue Reading
